In 2023, the European Commission has rightfully put the spotlight on the urgent need to tackle Europe’s skills shortages by designating it the EU ‘Year of Skills’. While recognition is always a good starting point, actual solutions to the many challenges are still lagging behind, particularly in addressing the root cause of the issue.
Unfortunately, the Skills and Talent Package and the new legislation proposed by the Commission to tackle the growing challenge of labour and skills shortages in the EU put forward an easy-fix solution pushed by employers only. This approach focuses on attracting migrant workers to Europe without ensuring their equal treatment in the labour market. Instead, long-term solutions based on industrial policy, active labour market policies, training, as well as collective bargaining are needed.
The European labour market has been affected by skills shortages already for the past three decades, with trade unions’ calls for solutions often falling on deaf ears. Over the past year, the number of job vacancies has consistently outnumbered the number of jobseekers, with employers competing for skilled workers. Intra-EU mobility is already causing a massive brain drain in Eastern Europe and will further widen the existing gap between Member States. Similar risks are also evident in the case of third-country migration.
Addressing the root causes
What Europe is currently experiencing is a result of inadequate policies that fail to address the root causes of these skills shortages, namely the poor quality and unattractiveness of jobs, as well as the absence of a guaranteed ‘right to training’ for workers. The European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training goes as far as to say that all sectors with bad pay and working conditions (characterised by jobs with unsociable hours, low autonomy, high pressure and demanding excessive flexibility) grapple with shortages. While 70 per cent of these companies report skills shortages, they fail to connect them to insufficient on-the-job training and a lack of incentives for attracting and retaining workers. This is confirmed by a recent ETUI study on job vacancy rates and wages in 22 EU countries, which shows that industries facing the worst labour shortages pay 9 per cent less on average than sectors with easier recruitment.
Even in countries with a long tradition of job training, like Germany, trade unions report that ‘never before have so few companies trained as now’. Unfortunately, most companies nowadays expect cost-free solutions from public authorities and refuse to invest in their own workforce. The issue is similar in the case of skills mismatches, which have not increased in the aftermath of the pandemic. Employers often cite skills mismatches as a key issue, forgetting that one solution to this problem is for them to invest in on-the-job training.
