Report highlights shortage of IT staff
The export group report found that the Irish work force had become increasingly flexible with over a million people entering and exiting the workforce.
The two reports ‘Monitoring Ireland’s Skills Supply: Trends in Education and Training Outputs 2013’ and the ‘Irish labour market and the National Skills Bulletin 2013’ found that the labour market is changing. There continues to be a shortage of jobs for the general population, but in niche areas there are not enough skills to fill vacancies.
Chairperson of the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, Una Halligan, said that language skills were key to achieving employment.
“Shortages are primarily confined to niche skill areas and in most instances remain of low magnitude; this year’s bulletin highlights the persistence of skills shortages in the areas of ICT, high-tech manufacturing (especially bio-pharma and medical devices), agri-food, sales, marketing, business, finance and healthcare.
“Multilingual skills are a key aspect of some of these shortages. For example, shortages of multilingual IT technicians, finance accounts managers, marketing associate professionals, financial administrators and some supply chain related occupations exist,” she said.
There are signs that the labour market is reacting to the jobs market with a 25% increase in computing at higher level, continuing the upward trend in computing graduate numbers observed last year; strong growth in CAO acceptances and enrolments for computing courses suggest that this trend will continue in the medium term.
Minister for Training and Skills Ciaran Cannon said: “The reports published paint a detailed picture of the supply and demand of skills in the Irish labour market. They serve as a valuable tool in advising Government on the current and future skills needs of the economy and anticipating any mismatches between skills supply and demand.”
