With 5 Million Unemployed, Spain Still Can’t Find Workers

With soaring youth unemployment, and close to 5 million people out of work overall, one would assume that the last problem Spain would encounter would be that it can’t find workers to fill open jobs.
However, as Bloomberg reports, Spain is facing labor shortages as employers struggle to find capable employees. “We were looking for people for two months. We managed to find one in Spain. We turned to Argentina for others” explains Samuel Pimentel, a headhunter who was searching for specialist consultants for a client.
Pimentel’s client asked for a list of candidates trained in”Agile” project management techniques for helping companies boost their productivity by using more IT systems. The client was even willing to pay $220,000 a year, almost 10 times the average salary in Spain, but Pimentel had a difficult time identifying candidates.
The main reason for this issue according to Valentin Bote, head of research at Randstad, a recruitment agency, is that the unemployed lack the skills to fill the available positions.
“It’s a paradox. The unemployment rate is too high. Yet we’re seeing some tension in the labor market because unemployed people don’t have the skills employers demand.” Bote said.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 1, 2016,.