Skills shortage leaves jobs unfilled

Skills shortage leaves jobs unfilled

One in five vacancies remains unfilled because of a shortage of skilled workers, a report suggests.

A fifth of public sector organisations had vacancies compared with 14% of private firms.

The rate of unfilled jobs in hotels and restaurants was twice as high as in manufacturing.

The report, by Dr Andy Dickerson of Warwick University's Institute for Employment Research, found there was one vacancy for every two people looking for a job.

Ten years ago, there was one opening for every 10 unemployed people.

In the last decade, unemployment has halved and job vacancies have more than doubled.

But high levels of job turnover made it difficult to predict where vacancies were more likely to be found.

The relationship between skill-shortage vacancies and local unemployment was weaker than for other vacancies, since these were the jobs for which the unemployed were least likely to be qualified and thus least able to fill.

Dr Dickerson found a skill "mismatch" between the unemployed and the vacancies available.

This, he added, left an important role for government-sponsored skills training and retraining initiatives.