Expats in demand as Dutch professional education schools fail
1 June 2005
AMSTERDAM — Small business association MKB-Nederland has said its members will start recruiting more expats into the country if Dutch professional education is not improved.
It said job skills will start to suffer if education and the efforts of workers don't start to improve. MKB said it will then become harder for Dutch nationals to get a job because employers will recruit workers from abroad.
The association pointed out on Wednesday the free movement of labour is already at work within the European Union.
In a warning to the Dutch government, MKB claimed the current labour market was not ready for an economic recovery.
It said a labour shortage
will occur if the government and schools do not succeed in the short-term in supplying a sufficient number of skilled workers for small and medium-sized businesses.
In that case, up to 50,000 expats might have to be recruited every year, depending on the tightness in the labour market.
On commission from the MKB, research bureau EIM recently investigated how difficult it would be to replace workers who take their pension in the coming five years.
In the scenario of zero economic growth, 15,000 extra full-time workers will need to be recruited per year. If the economy grows by 2 percent, that figure could amount to 93,000.
A TNS NIPO survey has also indicated that the demand for higher-educated workers at small and medium-sized companies is continually rising.
There is a shift in staff recruitment trends from a preference for MBO upper secondary vocational education graduates to HBO higher professional school graduates.
MKB is also calling for an increase in staff productivity, to be achieved with an improved deployment of workers.
It said the education system should more heavily focus on the already-employed workers and called on the government to make it more fiscally attractive to invest in the education of workers and the creation of more trainee jobs.
[Copyright Expatica News + ANP 2005] |
登录
