Skills shortage for UK's Engineering jobs vacancies predicted
Engineering recruitment could suffer following the removal of civil and aircraft engineers from the national list of in-demand occupations.
A report by the Recruiter website reports that British engineering recruitment firms believe that the removal could result in a shortage of engineering talent.
Last week the Prime Minister's speech on Immigration announced that hospital consultants, ship's officers, aircraft engineers and civil engineering jobs would be taken off the list of in-demand occupations.
This list describes where the Government believes there is a risk of skill shortages, and grants special dispensation to employ from abroad in those areas.
The managing director CBS Butler, David Leyshon, told Recruiter that the prime minister's speech was based on the economic slowdown of the last 12 months and the subsequent decrease in employment. He said that despite the decrease in the number of engineering jobs vacancies, "the underlying skills shortage remains."
Leyshon said "As the economy improves, those skills shortages will come back with a vengeance".
"It is going to restrict access to talent and is going to mean employers are going to have recruitment difficulties in meeting project deadlines."
Leyshon also said that recruitment agency staff would be "fishing in a smaller pond" and predicted that they will "not be able to deliver on client needs".
It remains to be seen what aspects of Brown's speech on immigration come into legislation. One significant section regarding recruitment agency work was referring to the Employment Agency Directive, which would have restructured the relationship between local and foreign workers.
As well as offering all temporary agency workers equal pay and conditions for employment over 12 weeks, it would have benefited local workers by ensuring that they were not disadvantaged by lower rates of pay given to agency workers from Europe. Under the new bill both types of workers would have to be paid the same rate after 12 weeks.
However the directive is among the legislation that has been opposed by the British Chamber of Commerce, who have petitioned the business secretary to defer implementation even beyond the already-delayed date of October 2011.