Aging populations, rapidly changing technological demands and, in some cases, the inability of education institutions to keep up have led to staff shortages felt by companies all over the world. Staffing firm Manpower published its latest Global Talent Shortage report earlier this year and compared with an edition covering the year 2017, it shows that the problem has only become worse.
Out of the approximately 40,000 employers surveyed in several industries and around 40 countries for each edition, three quarters now say that they have difficulty filling their roles. This is up from 45% when the same question was asked in 2017 and just 36% from the group’s first report covering 2013.
According to the survey, companies of all sizes and industries share the problem of staffing. Looking at different countries, aging society Japan occupied the top spot for staff shortages in 2017 and 2023 alike at 85% to 89% of companies reporting issues. Places where staff shortages got a lot worse over the past six years include Germany, where previously just around half of employers has reported issues. This was now up to 82%. In the United Kingdom, the change was even more drastic and went from just 19% to 80%. While Germany shares Japan’s demographic woes and its problems of channeling high-skilled immigration, the UK recently left the European Union and its economic zone, making it much harder for skilled laborers to immigrate to the country previously quite attractive to foreign labor.
The health care, consumer goods and information technology sectors had especially big issues finding staff recently, while the skills that were reportedly lacking most often included IT and data, engineering, sales, marketing and collaboration & teamwork.
Challenges differ in developing world
India is also among the countries most plagued by the phenomenon despite not sharing many of the previous countries’ characteristics. The issue in the Asian nation is more about a mismatch of the skills offered by workers and those sought by companies and institutions. While youth unemployment in the country has become so severe that it has led to riots and protests at times when applicants have scrambled for the limited positions that the government and private sector offer, Indian companies find many of the country’s graduates not employable as the education system is struggling to teach them enough of the relevant skills.
This creates the paradox of a perceived skilled labor surplus and a skill shortage at the same time. According to Indian newspaper Business Standard, a fragmented higher education landscape with not enough oversight is failing many young Indians and by extension, the country’s companies and economy as a whole.
The United States’ share of companies with skills shortages was below the survey average at 70% as the country maintains a younger population and stronger skilled immigration pipeline. Even lower results came out of Latin American countries Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Panama as well as Scandinavian countries Norway and Finland. In the latter nation, 59% of companies said they had issues with staffing—still quite a high share that reflects how pervasive the global demographic challenges and retraining demands shaping the job market really are.
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Charted by Statista