Skilled workers flock to UK to fill shortages due to euro trouble
The strength of the UK recovery is attracting talent from struggling economies, helping to fill shortages.
Adrian Gunn, chief executive of recruiters Matchtech, told City A.M. that the UK had a major skills shortage.
“Due to the skills shortage, candidates tend to have multiple job offers, but also are receiving quite a lucrative counter offer from their current employer to stay put,” Gunn said. Salaries among the highly skilled are rising quickly as a result, but recruiters are not necessarily benefiting as much as they might have expected.
“Multiple offers are elongating the process and putting a handbrake on permanent fee growth,”said Gunn.
Skilled labour is now coming from abroad to fill the shortage.
“We do a lot of recruitment in electronic engineering in automotives. We found 78 per cent of the candidates we interviewed from that sector were from abroad – notably Italy and Spain,”
They are not coming in fast enough though, Gunn sees salaries of high-skilled workers rising five per cent over the next year. It will not feed through to wage inflation, however, as there is still slack in low-skilled sectors.