There are huge staff shortages in Greece with companies looking for specialized employees in a number of sectors and not finding them.

The largest are found in occupations of a technical nature.

The unemployment % in the country may be the second highest in Europe, however, companies and businesses are unable to fill job vacancies in -mainly- technical professions.

“I’ll give you simple examples, we don’t have drivers, we don’t have cooks, we don’t have Clark operators, we don’t have electric welders, we don’t have metal structures, electricians, plumbers,” said Spyros Protopsaltis, Head of the Public Employment Service.

“The possibility of immediately finding a workforce has disappeared even though we are in an industrial area,” added Konstantina Kalodouka from the Aggregate Materials Company.

“There is a huge difficulty in finding qualified personnel especially in the technical professions,” says Maria Troka from the Greek Food Industry.

Craftsmen, electricians, drivers and concrete plant supervisors are the specialties with the greatest shortage.

“They are technical staff, craftsmen, electricians, drivers, people and people with a higher technical background, who could supervise concrete units,” says Haris Demertzis, from the concrete production company.

“We are facing a problem of finding staff among university-educated nurses,” emphasizes Lina Boga, who works in a private hospital.

Since 2018 and especially during the period of COVID, additional positions have been opened and many nurses have moved to the public sector.

“Many people want to deal with other professions and not with technical professions, more theoretical, that is, maybe they should turn to more theoretically oriented studies”, observes Konstantina Kalodouka.

“Certainly a difficult category is that of Clark operators and drivers those two seem to be the hardest to find a new colleague,” he points out.

In 2023 employers requested help from the Public Employment Service to cover a total of 11,540 jobs.

Of these, 1,190 were in the catering sector, 944 in the food industry, 405 in metal constructions, 258 in specialized construction activities and 209 in the Health sector.

“The tendency of young people is not to choose manual work professions anymore and all this creates a huge problem”, emphasizes Maria Troka.

In the construction sector in particular, the steep decline in construction activity during the financial crisis deprived companies in the sector of new workers

“From 2010 to 2020, I think that everyone experienced a shrinking of the markets in which they were active and this is probably one of the main causes of the current shortage”, underlined Haris Demertzis.

The root of the problem in the Health Sector is different, since according to Lina Boga, there are very few nurses who graduate from public schools each year, around 800 people.

“We have double the number of nurses retiring each year,” she explains.

“Another reason for the difficulty of finding nursing staff is that diagnostic centers and geriatric care units have increased greatly as the rate of population aging has increased greatly,” he summarizes.

But how do the experts explain that while the unemployment rate exceeds 9%, businesses are finding it difficult to fill vacant jobs?

“We do not produce graduates in the specialties that the economy demands. We overproduce graduates in professions with low or decreasing demand, or we underproduce graduates in professions with high or increasing demand”, estimates Spyros Protopsaltis and mentions that in other countries the choice to go to vocational education is not considered as something second-class to put it simply, it is a conscious choice, and in fact when we see the data there is professional advancement and good income and zero unemployment.

Many young people, although unemployed, choose to turn down jobs due to particularly low wages and poor working conditions

“They may give tokens but not give the right salary. They may give you a salary but no signs and you will be in black 04.14.24 Or the hours, they may tell you that it will be eight hours, but in the end you work 16 hours, 24 hours, says an unemployed woman.

“The average salary in Greece is the penultimate in Europe, while at the same time the working time is the longest on a weekly basis for employees”, emphasizes Christos Goulas from the Labor Institute – GSEE and adds that the gaps can be relatively easily filled if it is enough to have better work incentives and pay and secondly to have a developed education and vocational training system.

The Public Employment Service implements training programs for the unemployed with the aim of integrating them into the labor market.

“I’m looking for a cook. To cook for 200-300 people one must be trained as a cook just because he is unemployed does not mean that the next day he can enter a kitchen and cook for 200-300 people. This requires training and that’s where we invest,” emphasizes Spyros Protopsaltis.

At the same time, with a new law, the Ministry of Education establishes 60 versatile vocational training centers throughout the country.

“We can’t suddenly move an education system and tell students you have to get out of higher education and university, but we have to show them that we have another way. As a state, we must have a serious and quality professional education and training”, points out the Deputy Minister of Education Ioanna Lytrivi.

However, businesses also have a share of responsibility, with the official data of Eurostat ranking them in last place in the EU in terms of training and education.

“We are thinking very seriously about how we will actually attract people, who one would say will be “good material” to start building the new reality on them, the new professionals”, says Haris Demertzis.

For experts, upgrading professional education is a prerequisite for economic development and social cohesion in the country.