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The [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the vital contribution and value of migrant workers to our societies and economies. Yet their jobs have often been labelled as 'low-skilled', their work has been undervalued and their rights have been denied. As a result, many have risked their lives on the COVID-19 frontline while lacking the basic social protections enjoyed by other workers. Many national and local governments have relaxed migration regulations and created new incentives for migrant workers in essential services, demonstrating that migration policies - regardless of today's increasingly polarised debates - can and do change when necessary. This matters for the post-pandemic recovery, given that countries will continue to rely on migrant workers of all skills levels. The following policy recommendations emerge from our research: (1) Enhance routes to regularisation, in recognition of migrants' vital contribution to essential services; (2) Expand legal migration pathways, ensuring safe working conditions for all, to support post-COVID-19 global recovery, tackle shortages in essential workforces and fill skills gaps; (3) Ensure that migrants, whatever their status, have access to key basic services and social protection; and (4) Detach immigration policies from inflexible 'low' and 'high' skills classifications. Workers of all skills levels will be essential in the long path to recovery.

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The identification of shortages in the labour market and the respective supply needs by third country nationals is registered by region and in particular by regional unity and employment specialization. According to the National Strategy for the Integration of Third Country Nationals emphasis should be given to the integration of migrants already in the country, due to the economic crisis. It becomes evident through the joint ministerial decisions that in 2014 positions for which third country nationals were requested amounted to 9521 in total. The majority of these refer to the primary sector, namely workers in the fields of agriculture, fisheries and livestock. As estimated in this study, the establishment of a specialized monitoring mechanism is advisable in order to review the effects of migration policy on employment in conjunction with shortages in the Greek labour market. Its outcome would allow for coherent conclusions regarding the need - or the absence - of foreign manpower in the Greek labour market. While shortages in the Greek labor market are registered, there is currently no policy tool or monitoring mechanism to assess the effects of migration policy on employment and the migration issues that arise.

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Amidst slowing economic growth, global labour markets have shown resilience in 2023. Global unemployment has dropped to the lowest level since the outbreak of the [COVID-19] pandemic and labour force participation has recovered in most regions. Despite these positive headline indicators, fragility has emerged in working conditions, and a cost-of-living crisis has arisen from fast-rising energy and food prices. Employment growth in 2024 is projected to falter even though global unemployment will remain broadly unchanged. Major decent work deficits, which to a large degree predate the pandemic, are set to persist under these conditions - especially gender participation gaps, working poverty, and informality.

This [report] provides a comprehensive assessment of labour imbalances that arose with the recovery from the pandemic and exist alongside persistent decent work deficits. It analyses global patterns, regional differences, and outcomes across groups of workers. The report also offers labour market projections for 2024 and 2025. Finally, it presents trends in labour force participation, hours worked and employment growth and analyses their contributions to labour market imbalances.

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This report highlights that the nursing workforce worldwide is diminishing and the UK nursing workforce is no exception. The authors' primary argument is that while steps are being taken in the UK to alleviate the nursing shortage by funding more places in university nursing departments, this initiative is no longer viable due to the financial crisis in the [National Health Service] NHS, which funds nursing education. Also discussed is the significant influx of international nurses to the UK which, the report ascertains, is likely to be a short-term solution to a long-term problem as this is seen to deplete developing countries of their nurses, and international nursing bodies condemn it. The authors conclude that the outcome of this crisis may well lead to the disappearance of nurses from the UK NHS workforce as they are replaced by the more economic alternative of health care assistants and technicians.

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A shrinking working-age population will be the Russian Federation's biggest demographic challenge in coming decades. With workers increasingly scarce, sustainable future economic development depends on Russia's ability to bring into the labor force currently under-utilized groups, such as young mothers and older people, and to maximize the productivity of every worker. This study assesses the projected dynamics of the working-age population and how changes in labor force participation may affect the future workforce. It also assesses the potential contribution of individual factors to either facilitate or deter the participation of older Russians in the labor force. A review of disincentives for labor force participation in current social insurance programs and labor institutions is followed by policy proposals to help prolong the working lives of older adults.

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In many countries, training subsidies and levy schemes are used to tackle the problem that company-based provision of apprenticeship training is low. In this paper, we consider the introduction of a levy scheme in the care sector and estimate the causal effect exerted by substantial redistribution of care worker apprenticeship costs on the training activity of care facilities. We exploit the fact that the underlying apprenticeship levy was introduced across the German federal states at different points in time. For ambulatory care, we find a positive effect on the probability of hiring new apprentices and on the number of new apprentices. Inpatient care facilities react only at the intensive margin. This suggests that the positive effects in this sector are driven mainly by facilities that have already provided training slots before the reform.

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Member States affected by the [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic have often resorted to shelter in place orders to stop the virus from spreading widely. These orders have affected many economic activities, but are designed to prevent a shutdown of those essential activities that are meant to keep the population safe and fed. Agriculture is one of those sectors that needs to be kept functional, but mobility restrictions have kept seasonal temporary workers, which this sector has grown reliant on, from reaching their workplace curbing the productivity of this essential sector. This report analyses the potential for the agriculture sector to replace the seasonal workers who are prevented by shelter in place orders from reaching their usual place of work with EU native born workforce. Looking at labour market flows into agriculture in the past decade, this report finds that the probabilities of flows in agriculture are low. Movers into agriculture are mostly migrant men older than 19 living in a rural area and with low qualification. After analysing recent labour market trends, the report concludes that native workers can only partially fill potential vacancies in the sector.

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The [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic is having a dramatic economic impact in most countries. In the UK, it has led to sharp falls in labour demand in many sectors of the economy and to initial acute labour shortages in other sectors. Much more than in a typical downturn, the current crisis is not simply a general slowdown in economic activity but also a radical short-term shift in the mix of economic activities - of which an unknown, but possibly significant, amount will be persistent. The initial policy response has focused on cushioning the blow to families' finances and allowing the majority of workers and firms to resume their original activities once the crisis subsides. These are crucial priorities. But there should also be a focus on reallocating some workers, either temporarily if working in shut-down sectors or permanently by facilitating transitions to sectors and jobs offering better prospects and facing labour shortages. The phasing-out of the furlough subsidies, which is projected to happen in Autumn 2020, brings this into even sharper focus since the alternative for many workers will be unemployment. Active labour market policy will need to be front and centre.

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Shortages of workers with relevant qualifications have become a major challenge affecting European competitiveness. In the context of rapid technological change, Europe's declining population and ageing workforce, labour shortages are expected to increase in the future. This study analyses: (1) the role of labour migration in efforts to overcome labour shortages; (2) the variety of instruments used to identify and monitor labour shortages at European Union (EU) and national level (such as employer surveys, forecasts and qualitative studies); and (3) the extent to which these instruments are used in designing labour migration policy at national level.

This synthesis report has been produced by the European Migration Network (EMN), which comprises the European Commission, its service provider (ICF International) and EMN national contact points (EMN NCPs). The report is based on national contributions from 25 EMN NCPs (Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Slovak Republic, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom) according to a Common template developed by the EMN and followed by EMN NCPs to ensure, to the extent possible, comparability.

So far, efforts at EU-level to attract skilled workers from third countries, i.e. countries outside the EU, have had a limited impact, in part because of the recent nature of several EU legislative instruments. Most member states view migration as part of a wider strategy to address labour shortages. However they differ in the relative importance they give to labour migration in comparison with other measures such as market activation of the current resident population and reforming education and training opportunities. Two approaches have been identified to linking economic migration to labour market shortages: (a) a supply-centred 'human capital' approach where admission frameworks are adjusted in order to attract migrants with characteristics that will place them in a favourable position for labour market insertion; and (b) a demand-centred approach involving granting accelerated or simplified admission to migrants in previously identified shortage occupations. In practice, the two models often interact.

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Two stylised facts of the German labour market are that first, the demand for high-skilled labour has been growing rapidly for a number of years and second, the country is facing a particularly strong demographic change with the expected size of the population decreasing rapidly and the average age of the labour force increasing sharply. This has led to a widely discussed fear of 'labour shortages'. One of the reasons often stated in the public debate is that within a given time period many more old individuals are retiring than young individuals are entering the labour market. Although there is a certain logic in this argument, it is only prima facie convincing because firstly, a change in labour demand could counteract this effect and secondly, it is unclear whether - given labour demand for the occupations people retire from - people retiring from the labour market are normally 'replaced' by young cohorts entering the labour market.

Thirdly, even if the size of a cohort differs between generations, it is by no means clear what the effects on labour supply are as, for example, the participation rates may also differ. [The authors] address these issues from a theoretical and empirical perspective. In the theoretical part [the authors] focus on the relationship between vacancies and unemployment (labour-market tightness) and show that it does not always increase with demographic change. In the empirical part, [the authors] analyse how employment is affected over time by different shares of different age cohorts. [The authors] find no evidence that a higher number of retirees in an occupation leads to a higher demand for younger workers. Instead, to a large extent, retirees seem to be 'replaced', if they are replaced at all, by middle-aged cohorts who change occupations. Thus, [the authors] conclude that the interaction between large retiring cohorts and small entering cohorts within occupations is less direct than is suggested in the public debate.

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