UK firms hire migrants to fill skills gap

And the UK employers show increased interest in hiring migrant workers for various private and public sector jobs. This has been revealed by a latest survey which says that out of every five employers, at least one employer favors recruiting migrant labor force considering the period of last three months.

The trend of hiring migrant labor force has not witnessed any decline even in the recession period, the quarterly Labor Market Outlook 
survey by KPMG and CIPD (the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development) found.

The data for the last three months reveals that nearly 19 percent of employers in the UK recruited migrants and the ratio of hiring by public sector employers was significantly higher at 24 percent as compared to 15 percent private sector employers hiring migrants.

Facing a skills shortage in the country, the employers in the UK find it hard to fill the vacancies from within the country. Not only this, the survey of nearly 700 employers in the country states that even after recruiting foreign-born workers, there were still several existing 
vacancies for which no candidate was available. 41 percent of employers in the UK said there were positions yet to be filled.

Among the hard-to-fill positions include 52 percent vacancies for high-skilled jobs including doctors, nurses and engineers.

The public policy adviser, CIPD and author of the report, Gerwyn Davies, said that employers in the UK are trying to bridge the gap between the existing vacancies in the country and the required work force by resorting to recruitment of foreign-born workers or even by outsourcing the work to various overseas countries.

The advisory partner at KPMG, Mark Williamson, stated that the government and the business need to address the skills gap.

Nearly half of the employers in the UK planning to outsource jobs prefer India for relocating jobs while nearly 37 percent of the employers think of shifting jobs to Eastern Europe.