http://abc.az/eng/news_05_02_2013_71449.html
Baku, Fineko/abc.az. The International Labour Organization (ILO)
recognized workers (term “employees” is applied in Europe currently) as
culprits that several developed economies are seeing increasing numbers
of job vacancies but their unemployment rates are not going down.
In its report “Global Employment Trends 2013” ILO concludes that the
cause is that many of the workers who lost their jobs to the crisis do
not have the skills that the labour market now demands.
“These skills mismatches mean that unemployed people need much longer
to find a new job, which in turn drives up long-term unemployment,”
says Labour Economist Theo Sparreboom, one of the authors of the ILO’s
recently published report.
In his view, this particularly affects young people, who get most of
their training and education before they start working or early in their
careers.
Workers in the construction and financial sectors in countries like
the United States and Spain were among the first to be hit by the crisis
in late 2008 and 2009. When they lost their jobs, they found that
sectors which had not been affected did not require the skills they had.
As the crisis spread through international trade, occupations in the
exporting industries were also affected. They also faced and continue to
face the same problem.
In the United States, for example, about 30 per cent of jobs in
construction were lost between 2007 and 2012, and employment in durable
goods manufacturing is 15 per cent below pre-crisis levels. In contrast,
employment in education and health services is estimated to have risen
20 per cent. This has raised concerns about skills and occupational
mismatches that could drive up unemployment rates, since the crisis-hit
and the recovering sectors require different competencies.
In some cases, workers have relocated to different areas or
countries, where jobs are available in their field, as is the case with
Spaniards moving to Germany and even Portuguese workers heading to
Angola.
Some have opted for “occupational downgrading” – taking a job below
their previous level of skills – which will lead to increasing numbers
of over-qualified workers.
The issue of skills mismatches has received particular attention in
developed economies as a result of the economic crisis but it is a
problem that affects labour markets in all countries.
Skills mismatches can be a transitory phenomenon if dealt with
properly. Targeted educational policies can help address the issue by
ensuring jobseekers continue to be employed in the more dynamic sectors
of the economy.
But as the number of unemployed workers, as well as the length of
their unemployment spells increase, it becomes more and more difficult
to tackle the problem.
The challenge for countries is to link skills to productivity,
employment, and development. And the key is policy coordination and
involvement of social partners and key stakeholders in skills’
development.
“We recommend that policy-makers take coordinated action to reduce
unemployment, including services to make job searching and matching more
effective, like investing in job skills and retraining programs,” says
Sparreboom.
http://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/global-employment-trends/2013/lang--en/index.htm
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