One in Three Employers Can’t Find the Right Workers: Survey

A shortage in technical skills is affecting global productivity and could hamper recovery and growth prospects in crisis-hit Europe, David Arkless, President of Corporate and Government Affairs at employment agency Manpower said on Tuesday.

The U.S. employment agency’s 2012 Talent Shortage Survey found that 1 in 3 global employers are finding it difficult to find the right people to fill the jobs they’re offering.

The survey has shown that the skills shortages are most severe in Asia Pacific (at 45 percent) and the Americas (41 percent) with the supply and demand of skilled workers posing the biggest problem to employers, Arkless told CNBC’s“Worldwide Exchange”.

“[The problem] is accentuated in countries where populations are falling, where young people are staying in education as long as they can because of the relatively high unemployment rates and they’re doing academic subjects that aren’t suited to the job market. They just don’t have the right skills and they’re not work-ready.”

Arkless told CNBC that the vacuum in technical skills throughout Europe could hamper the recovery of euro economies, and did not bode well for the future of the euro zone,

“We’re having trouble finding technical and vocational workers and that is the case all over Europe, we can’t find people with trades and technical skills and competencies” he said.

Though Spain’s youth unemployment rate now stands at 50 percent, Arkless believes that eventually there will be a recovery in Southern Europe. However, he said that massive youth unemployment and skills shortages in the region must be tackled now to avoid future social and economic chaos,

“We’re building up a huge problem with regard to the people we need in the work force when that recovery happens. We’re developing an under-class of long-term, unemployed young people and this is going to be a huge social and economic problem within the next 5 to 6 years so we’ve got to do something about it.”