Shortage of skilled workers is worsening in industry and service fields
Building trade has dire need for carpenters and bricklayers
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For cleaners, carpenters, welders, and other skilled primary labourers there will be plenty of work in the future - and is already - if only there were enough professionals to get involved.
Many industrial and service fields in Finland are handicapped by a chronic shortage of skilled professionals, a situation further worsened by the steady exodus into retirement.
Construction, metals, chemicals, and service industry companies, as well as the municipal sector, all need labourers to fill the increasing number of vacancies.
News items of large-scale lay-offs and the bleak employment statistics often make it seem as if there was no work whatsoever available in Finland. And yet, companies are constantly hiring new workers. In the public employment exchange there are around 350,000 openings available on a yearly basis.
The labour market desperately needs workers who have completed a basic vocational training, as well as professionals with specialisation skills acquired through work.
The construction industry, for one, suffers from lack of site foremen but also carpenters and bricklayers. According to the Confederation of Finnish Industries (EK), half of the country's construction firms see the lack of professionals as a hindrance to growth.
The technology industry struggles with similar problems. There, a third of businesses have difficulties in finding competent labour, reports Industrial Relations Assistant Director Ari Sipilä from the Technology Industries of Finland.
In the electronics boom of the 1990s, the field lacked university-educated engineers with bachelor's and master's degrees in particular, whereas in recent years the need for professionals has shifted towards machine shops and production lines in the metals industry.
Every year, the industry loses 5,000 workers with vocational skills through retirement.
"To replace these people, we need more welders, tinsmiths, mechanics, and machinists. Already last year, the firms reported difficulties in finding suitable workers to fill almost a thousand vacancies", Sipilä explains.
The chemical industry, in turn, longs for more laboratory assistant and process controller students to provide labour for the field. Both professions require a secondary vocational education.
Surprisingly enough, labour shortage troubles the service industries as well, even though according to some experts the field was supposed to be Finland's stopgap as little by little industrial jobs inevitably drift abroad through globalisation.
According to the latest EK trade cycle barometer, some 22 percent of businesses and services in real estate, education, social services, and health care are suffering from a shortage of skilled workers.
The real estate services' biggest problem at the moment is to find more cleaners and plumbers. The municipal sector, in turn, needs more highly educated professionals such as speech therapists, special kindergarten teachers, specialist doctors, social workers, and health centre general practitioners. Numerically, the most vacancies are currently in nursing.
But where do the new vocational institute graduates disappear? "To universities and polytechnics", is the unanimous reply from industrial and service industry employers' organisations.
"It is absurd to turn an entire generation into doctors and masters of arts and sciences. Vocational training should be valued higher in this country. We need doers", says Heikki Ropponen of the Federation of the Finnish Retailers.
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 9.8.2005 - TODAY |
 Shortage of skilled workers is worsening in industry and service fields
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