We though it interesting to share with you some paragraphs from an article written by Jana Liptakova and published in the Slovak Spectator the 2nd of this March. As you will read the author believes that Slovakia is in need for, amongst others, EurEta-level engineers and professionals:
“Difficulty in hiring qualified labour has been a main complaint of businesses in Slovakia for some time.
IT companies say they could immediately employ more than 10,000 qualified people and carmakers and their suppliers expect they will need 14,000 new workers over the next three years. Other sectors have also been grumbling about problems in finding young and qualified employees. Health care, for instance, is worrying about ageing doctors and the lack of nurses.
Companies are struggling to hire new workers, either to fill places vacated by those who have retired or for brand new positions as companies expand. At the same time, there are still more than 270,000 people in the labour market without jobs. The reason for this paradox is what has been called a skills gap resulting from a mismatch between what jobseekers can offer and the specific skills demanded by employers. To address this problem, companies – in cooperation with schools – have developed the dual education scheme. They are also calling on the government to make it easier to hire workers from countries that are not members of the EU. The government does not like this idea and instead is pinning its hopes on various requalification schemes, by luring Slovaks working abroad to return, as well as by tightening conditions for the jobless to receive benefits from Slovak social assistance programmes.
Martin Hošták of the National Union of Employers (RÚZ) sees two reasons behind the lack of available labour. One of them is the revival of the economy that has kept growing at a rate above 3 percent; the other one is that the education system is graduating students in professions that employers are not much interested in.“The education system does not fulfil the needs of employers and the gap between the demand and supply has been widening,” stated Hošták, as cited by the TASR newswire.
He also pointed out that qualified workers or even just recent school graduates who depart for jobs abroad are a problem as well. Because solving the problems of the current education system will need more time, employers are asking that it be made easier to hire workers from other countries.
Importing labour, alongside requalification programmes, is suggested as another way for employers to find necessary skilled labour. For example, the automotive sector expects that it will need about 14,000 people to fill vacancies during the next three years and it wants to bring 4,000 to 5,000 of these workers from abroad. This is because the dual education scheme is just starting and it will take some time until it starts producing newly-qualified workers for the labour market.
“The import of employees is not a systemic way, but it is a way to help those [employers] suffering from the lack of workers so that they have some breathing room,” said Jaroslav Holeček, vice-president of the Slovak Automotive Industry Association (ZAP). “It is a temporary way; what we need to change is the education system.”
The car producing sector hopes that it will secure the rest of its needed labour via targeted requalification programmes which could bring 5,000 to 6,000 workers.
In the meantime, carmakers in Slovakia already employ hundreds of foreigners. For example,
Bratislava-based Volkswagen Slovakia has ‘borrowed’ 550 people from its sister company Audi from the Hungarian town of Győr. They are expected to help manufacture cars in Bratislava until about 2018. The Trnava-based PSA Groupe Slovakia, which in January 2017 had about 3,800 employees, was seeking to hire new workers to launch weekend shifts and reported that it employed about 450 foreigners – more than half are from Serbia, mostly with the status of a Slovak living abroad. So even though Serbia is not member of the EU, these individuals do not need any special permission to work in Slovakia.
At the end of 2016, ÚPSVaR reported 35,100 foreigners working in Slovakia. Compared with the end of 2015, this is a significant increase of 9,600 people, a 27 percent jump. Of these foreigners, Romanians were the biggest share with 7,400, an increase by 1,100 from the previous year. Serbians were next with 4,900, an increase of 3,600 from a year earlier and Czechs followed with 4,100 employed in Slovakia, up by 939.
In response to the call of employers to make Slovakia more open to foreign workers, Minister Richter agreed that bringing in foreign labour is a solution, but said that the government would not support a flat, blanket permission.
“I’m saying it very clearly: if a labour office is not able to secure required professions … we are ready to allow arrival of the labour force also from the so-called third countries,” stated Richer in mid-January while admitting that the labour market is unable to fully satisfy the demand of employers for specific professions that are in short supply.
But permission to bring in labour from abroad will be granted only under individual projects and the government does not plan in any way to ease conditions for foreigners outside the EU to come to work in Slovakia.
“We are not interested in the arrival of a cheap labour force that would break down the growth of wages,” Richter said, pointing out the still high number of relatively well-educated people registered with labour offices.
HR experts expect that the lack of qualified labour will continue to be a main factor influencing the labour market in 2017.
“The growth of employment and wages will continue; simultaneously the current lack of available labour would deepen,” said Sirota, estimating that this would push up average wages by as much as almost 4 percent in 2017.
Ričányová of Grafton Slovakia expects a high demand for technical professions, reflecting the increasing automation of production, while candidates with non-technical education without knowledge of at least one world language will have problems finding an acceptable job. She added that the interest of employers in hiring people older than 50 years is increasing as these persons are able to work at the most demanding specialised positions.
“Production companies are opening new work positions where expertise and significant experience are needed,” said Ričányová. “Specialists in this age group can get a job within a few days and usually there is no lack of offers for them.”
HR experts believe that attracting enough workers to the labour market as well as hopes that the education system will be able to generate the graduates in the needed professions will be crucial for Slovakia’s future development.”