Although the unemployment rate continues to be high, attaining qualified workers to fill vacant positions remains a problem for businesses. A recent employment survey found that 28 percent of companies cannot find skilled candidates for their open positions.
According to the CareerBuilder report, information technology, sales and engineering are the industries the skills gap has hit hardest. The survey revealed 41 percent of companies are seeing a loss in productivity, 22 percent are unable to grow their business and 21 percent have seen a decline in revenue due to the inability to hire qualified candidates.
However, only 38 percent of U.S. companies cited suffering due to vacant positions compared to 41 percent in the United Kingdom and 81 percent in China. Matt Ferguson, CEO of CareerBuilder, said that finding trained workers is a worldwide problem.
"The inability to fill high skill jobs can have an adverse ripple effect, hindering the creation of lower-skilled positions, company performance and economic expansion," said Ferguson. "Major world economies are feeling the effects of this in technology, healthcare, production and other key areas. The study underlines how critical it is for the government, private sector and educational institutions to work together to prepare and re-skill workers for opportunities that can help move the needle on employment and economic growth."
