Currently, there are some 20 million unemployed people across Europe. However, the simultaneous existence of four million unfilled job vacancies indicates a serious mismatch in skills sets. Things are not all gloom and doom for Europe.
Globalisation widens the opportunities but also the threats and whilst Europe scores well on matters such as literacy it falls behind on knowledge based skills to the predictable countries such as Japan and South Korea and this will increase as India and China invest heavily in giving their people the tools to compete. This just doesn’t mean things like IT but also skills within processing as internationalisation will mean outsourcing of manufacturing processes to lean low cost economies.
At an individual level you will need to stand out from the crowd to truly succeed. “Canon fodder” migration will continue but as a short term solution to plug holes while a better solution is sought.
“Polish workers need to understand the game has changed unless they have transferable skills and speak the local language.” advised Chris Slay of Skills Provision. “We are seeing a lot more specific skills set enquiries, rather than general support roles.”
Author: Peter Arkwright
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