ManpowerGroup’s annual Talent Shortage Survey for 2014 found that 42 percent of Greek employers face difficulties in finding skilled workers. The portion is up 4 units from last year and stands at 6 units above the international average. The main problems regarding the Greek workforce include a lack of necessary skills (42%), a lack of hard skills (29%), a shortfall of soft skills (19%) and a lack of available candidates (18%).

In Greece, 750 employers were questioned. For the seventh consecutive year, they said they mainly had difficulties covering professional sales job positions, followed by difficulties in covering top executive jobs and skilled technicians, workers and machinery operators, while customer service and IT staff were no longer in the top-10 of labor shortfall.

The ManpowerGroup said that two out of three Greek employers (66%) said their problems in finding the right workers have a moderate to high impact on their business ability to respond to their customer needs, up 12 percentage points from 2013.

The survey was conducted in 42 countries around the world with a sample of more than 37,000 employers. On a global level, a 36% of employers said the faced difficulties in finding workers with necessary skills, up one percentage point from last year, to the highest level in the last seven years.