Despite a drop in the vacancy rate, the labor shortage remains a concern.
The European labor market is recovering – or at least showing signs of recovery – from the repercussions of the Covid-19 crisis, but it is still far from meeting demand.
The latest statistics show a reduction in vacancies in the labor market, with employment also increasing during the second quarter of the year.
The job vacancy rate – the proportion of total vacancies – increased to 2.7% from 2.8% in the first quarter.
During the same period, the employment rate of people aged 20 to 64 stood at 75.4%, a slight increase of 0.1 percentage points.
This development, however, is secondary to the general trend: the rate of long-term job vacancies in the EU has continued to grow each year, failing to match supply with demand.
The EU job vacancy rate has continued to rise since 2020, when many people were furloughed or made redundant to cut costs due to the pandemic.
Despite a rise in the employment rate in the second quarter, an earlier report from the European Commission noted labor shortages and skills gaps.
The creation of new jobs and the need to replace retiring workers causes “shortages” which are reflected in these statistics, the report adds.
These shortages are expected to worsen, according to the European Commission report, due to the projected decline in the working age population, which is expected to fall from 265 million in 2022 to 258 million by 2030.
In which countries are there the most job offers?
Among the EU member states for which figures are available from Eurostat, the Netherlands has the highest job vacancy rate in the EU, with 4.7% of total vacancies.
Bulgaria and Romania, on the other hand, recorded a vacancy rate of only 0.8% during the same quarter.
Among vacancies posted online during the same period, software developers and sales assistants were in highest demand.
Jobs in advertising, marketing and production also had a significant number of vacancies, in addition to engineering and research and development.
The labor shortage in Europe, one of the reasons for job vacancy?
Compared to the job vacancy rates in the second quarter of 2021 and 2022, this year’s numbers fall somewhere in between.
The job vacancy rate in the EU stood at 2.2% in the second quarter of 2021, immediately after the opening of major markets. It reached 3% in the second quarter of 2022 and has started to decline since then.
National statistics show that the continent struggles to fill positions, often due to a lack of skilled labor.
According to Eurostat, more than 75% of EU businesses already struggle to find professionals with the skills needed to fill roles, hampering economic growth.
The German government’s new immigration law, passed in August, aims to attract skilled workers from outside the EU to combat the country’s labor shortage.
The Danish government has also approved a three-year visa for international students who want to work after graduation to fill positions.
In contrast, some 27.5 million people in the EU labor force reported being unemployed, underemployed, looking for work but not immediately available, or available but not looking for work. ‘a job.
This means that just over one in eight people in the EU are exposed to “flexibility” of the labor market, defined by the International Labor Organization (ILO) as “the difference between the volume of work desired by workers and the volume of paid work available”.
The unemployment rate in the EU has fallen since 2020, “not because of an increase in unemployment, but rather because of an increase in the number of people available for work but not looking for it”according to the Eurostat report.
This has led to vacancies, resulting in insignificant variations in vacancy rates, including during the last quarter, the report adds.