Nearly half of employers in Taiwan experienced difficulty filling critical positions this year, reflecting a persistent talent shortage crisis, a survey released by ManpowerGroup said yesterday.
The Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based employment agency’s annual survey showed that 47 percent of the 1,020 Taiwanese employers polled could not find qualified talent. While that was down 7 percentage points from last year’s survey, it was the eighth-highest percentage in the world and the fifth-highest in the Asia-Pacific region.
It was also below the average of 45 percent for the Asia-Pacific region, data showed.
Taiwanese employers had the most difficulty filling positions for sales representatives, engineers and technicians, the report said.
ManpowerGroup Taiwan country manager Terence Liu (劉玿廷) attributed the difficulty to jobseekers’ lack of soft skills, such as communication skills, ability to work with a team and flexibility.
More than half of employers polled also said jobseekers did not have sufficient hard skills such as foreign language proficiency.
“[But] alarmingly, employers are less concerned about the impact talent shortages are having on clients and investors,” Liu said.
More than 70 percent of employers in Taiwan indicated that unfilled positions are expected to have little or no impact on constituents, such as customers and investors, a considerable increase from the 39 percent recorded last year, Liu added.
On the global front, more than one-third of employers reported difficulty in filling jobs due to a lack of available talent.
The hardest jobs to fill in the world were skilled trades workers, engineers and sales representatives, according to ManpowerGroup’s survey of nearly 40,000 employers across 41 countries and territories.
More than 80 percent of polled employers in Japan had difficulty finding the right people to fill jobs, marking the highest level globally, followed by employers in Brazil and Bulgaria, the report said.
Talent supply and demand issues were more acute in the Asia-Pacific region and the Americas than in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, with 45 percent of Asia-Pacific employers reporting difficulty filling job vacancies, data showed.
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