Amidst all the current debates in Europe about competitiveness, productivity, migration and economic transitions, both green and digital,

you're bound to have come across the ongoing issue of labour shortages in recent times, particularly since the pandemic.

Significant numbers of employers not being able to find workers to fill vacancies is of course

considered a major policy issue intrinsically tied to all of the subjects that I've just mentioned

but what are the major factors driving these shortages where do we see them the most

and what kinds of solutions would be the most effective?

Today's guest is ETI Senior Researcher Wouter's Weisser, an expert on labour market dynamics.

Having studied this issue in depth and from multiple angles, he certainly has no shortage,

so to speak, of insights into the topic.

I'm your host, Bethany Staunton, and you're listening to ETIP Podcast, Voices on the World of Work.

Wouter, welcome to the ETIP podcast.

Thank you very much for having me on the podcast. I'm really happy to join you for this.

So let's start very broad.

What's going on with labour shortages in Europe right now?

That is a really good question because, as you know, ever since the pandemic, this has been a very important topic in terms of policy agenda, in terms of labour market.

And a lot of attention has come to ways to address the different aspects of labor shortages.

What we can see from the data is that generally from 2012-2013 or something,

labor shortages have been starting to increase steadily across Europe.

Then at the pandemic, obviously there was a big hit, and for a very short while there was no real demand for labor.

But then from about the second, third quarter of

2020, this started to pick up at a far faster rate, and it peaked somewhere 2022, 2023.

At the moment we're seeing a small decline overall, but we're still at a level above 2019 and

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