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In the light of the importance of skills for the EU economy and the European Year of Skills, the 2023 annual Employment and Social Developments in Europe (ESDE) review provides evidence on persistent labour shortages and changing skills needs in the EU. The report considers the implications of skills demands in the context of the green and digital transitions. It highlights certain labour market participation challenges, including demographic changes (notably ageing) and lower labour market participation among certain population groups, with a particular focus on women and migrant workers born outside the EU.

The analysis shows that labour shortages are found in a diverse range of occupations across all skill levels: construction, healthcare, science, ICT, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The importance of the structural drivers, underlying shortages, vary by occupation and sector. Overall, the working conditions or human resource management (HRM) practices are more often linked to employers' difficulties in finding people, rather than a lack of skills among job applicants. Still, a limited supply of skilled workers poses challenges in certain fields (e.g. STEM, healthcare).

The report highlights the importance of policies and reform measures to alleviate persistent labour shortages. Those include investing in training and adult learning, increasing financial incentives to work, alleviating the barriers to people entering the labour market, improving work and pay conditions and social protection coverage, and implementing policies to attract workers from abroad into jobs facing shortages.

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The Dutch labour market is strong but very tight. The unprecedently fast recovery from the [Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19)] pandemic, fast-changing skill demand, low hours worked, and the segmentation of the labour market contribute to labour shortages, weighing on growth potential and jeopardising the green and digital transitions. To tackle shortages, lifting labour supply is a necessary complement to raising productivity, as labour-saving innovation alone is unlikely to significantly reduce overall labour demand. Lowering the effective tax rate on moving from part-time to full-time employment and streamlining income-dependent benefits while improving access to childcare would both increase labour input and reduce gender inequalities in career prospects, incomes, and social protection. Narrowing regulatory gaps between regular and non-standard forms of employment further would alleviate shortages by facilitating transitions between occupations. Better integrating people with a migrant background and easing medium-skill labour migration in specific occupations would help to fill vacancies, especially those related to the lowcarbon transition. Scaling up the individualised training scheme while ensuring quality and providing stronger incentives for co-financing by employers would boost the supply of skills and promote growth in expanding industries. Rewarding teachers in schools where shortages are significant and facilitating mobility between vocational and academic tracks would improve equality in education and better prepare the future workforce.

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To remain competitive in technological growth and innovation, Europe must recruit and retain women for the fastest-growing tech roles of the foreseeable future.

European leaders looking to build competitive advantage and growth by addressing their technology gap should consider one fact: women occupy only 22 per cent of all tech roles across European companies. That's a stunning statistic at a time when technology underpins so much of the innovation and growth in the world today. Addressing this shortfall is about much more than doing the right thing; it's an economic necessity. While the spate of tech layoffs in the face of economic uncertainties ahead has caused companies to rethink their talent strategies, only 7 per cent of the layoffs have been in Europe, according to the State of European tech report for 2022, and the underlying economic fundamentals that rely on tech talent remain in place.

In fact, McKinsey analysis shows a tech talent gap of 1.4 million to 3.9 million people by 2027 for EU-27 countries. If Europe could double the share of women in the tech workforce to about 45 per cent, or an estimated 3.9 million additional women by 2027 - something we believe is possible - it could close this talent gap and benefit from a GDP increase of as much as €260 billion to €600 billion. To better understand why Europe struggles to find and retain tech-talented women, and to determine how best to address the issue, we undertook a detailed analysis of the entire development funnel in Europe, from primary school all the way to entering the workforce.

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Supporting the rapid growth in the ageing population is one of EU's greatest challenges, placing the care sector high on policy agendas. Demographic change, technological advancements and poor working conditions exercise pressure on care workers' employment and skills. This policy brief discusses developments in the employment and skills of care sector workers, and the role that vocational education and training (VET) can play in support, building on Cedefop's skills forecast and online job advertisement analysis.

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In Asia, aging countries with slow population growth worry about a lack of workers in the future and see older people's labor as a potential solution. However, this leaves out the work that many older people already do-unpaid care work. Drawing on data from Bangladesh, India, Mongolia, and Thailand, the estimates in this paper show that older people, especially older women, are doing a great deal of work caring for others. In this case, policies that aim to increase overall market labor force effort by increasing the market labor of older people may underachieve their goals if they do not account for the older people's unpaid care work responsibilities. Finally, we use the estimates of the older people's unpaid care work to think about investments in the paid care economy that might be needed to replace unpaid care work of the older people if they increase labor market effort but not total work. These simple calculations indicate that the scale of investment required is manageable.

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Purpose: To examine the perspective of third-level university students in the context of the value proposition of construction apprenticeships in Ireland. Design/methodology/approach: The research uses a qualitative method, conducting semi-structured interviews with 20 third-level university students enrolled on a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree program in Construction Management in Ireland. Findings: The results highlight six themes. These include that society appears to be directly and/or indirectly steering students towards university. This is driven by what appears to be a prevailing stigma in that apprenticeships are not seen as an achievement by society. Also, apprenticeships are seen as a limited career choice, while also being one which appears to repel female entrants.

Practical implications: If the shortage of new skilled workers entering the construction industry continues, construction organisations will not have the necessary resources to tender for, and subsequently, complete new work. Social implications: The perception of what could have been seen as potential new apprenticeship entrants, but ultimately chose university, is worth examining further with a view to industry addressing the shortcomings identified. This therefore can provide an opportunity to stem the tide of reducing apprenticeship numbers, while also providing a viable alternative to university for those who wish to pursue alternative routes of entering the sector. Originality/value: The paper uniquely focuses on the third-level university student's perspectives and what influenced their decision to pursue third-level university education over that of an apprenticeship within the built environment; an area which has yet to be investigated.

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This brief discusses the transitions of rural women in and out of employment since the start of the global pandemic in response to changes in the household due to the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 crisis. We postulate that these household changes, i.e. loss of employment by other household members, increase in household size, and increase in unpaid care work, affected women's exit and entry into employment. The key findings highlight the complex coping strategies at the household level where women's work - paid and unpaid - plays a critical role. This brief summarizes the paper Barcia de Mattos, Fernanda; Dasgupta, Sukti; Esquivel, Valeria; and Ghani, Sajid (2023), 'Push and pull factors and women's rural employment in India since COVID-19,' Review of agrarian studies, vol. 12, no. 2.

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Group 1 metal and chemical industries formed the essential suppliers of British war materials during [World War Two] WW2. Their industrial sectors covered metal manufacture, general and electrical engineering, vehicle production, aircraft production, shipbuilding, metal goods, chemicals and explosives, and scientific instruments. Due mainly to almost 4 million men joining the armed forces, acute labour shortages necessitated women's recruited in large numbers. Women workers accounted for 16 per cent of total Group 1 employment in 1939 rising to a peak of 37 per cent in 1943. We use Ministry of Labour statistics on total annual numbers of female and male employees between 1937 and 1960. We examine in detail women's recruitment, training, skill growth as well as firms' radical changes to production methodologies to accommodate lower average women's skills. We compare female and male employment during the wartime transition period 1944 to 1947, followed by the period 1948 to 1960. Explanations are given for the decline and rise of female fortunes in the two periods. The employment data allow us to compare women's war-time and peace-time activities at industrial section-levels - e.g. repair of aircraft, iron and steel melting, explosives manufacture. The analysis includes wartime metal working data of the Engineering Employers' Federation (EEF). This allows us to widen our analysis. Among other features we use (1) female/male pay differentials to proxy the growth of women's skill attainments, and (2) differentiate between piecework and timework to compare employment advantages of incentivised payments contracts versus fixed short-run wage contracts.

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The Labour Market Update is a quarterly report providing information about issues affecting Australia's current and emerging labour market. The September 2023 update highlights: (1) strong labour market conditions over 2022-2023; female full-time employment growth is particularly strong; (3) 91 per cent of total employment growth is in occupations typically requiring post-school qualifications; and (4) a high demand for electricians in regional Western Australia and Queensland and more.

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Purpose: The purpose of this viewpoint is to discuss and provide solutions for the current staffing crisis facing tourism-related industries. Considering that staff shortages are prominent in most industries this article suggests organizational changes that are needed to address these problems. Design/methodology/approach: This viewpoint unpacks the reason behind the shortage in staff and suggests potential solutions, based on organizational development. Findings: The strategies offered here as potential solutions for human resources center on changing the image of the roles that are suffering shortages. This includes developing organizational practices to provide changes in the areas of recruitment, reward, and work-life balance. These strategies are contextualized with the transformation of other jobs due to the global pandemic and the feminized nature of the tourism-related industries.

Originality/value: This viewpoint is particularly topical as it speaks to the current well-publicized crises in the staffing of airports and wider shortages of hospitality staff in developed nations. It is well positioned to spark discussion and future research on areas such as dignity at work in tourism-related industries, gendered work, and post-pandemic employment practices in services.

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