The number of job vacancies increased more in the sectors where the lowest wages are paid

“I work as a waiter. From Tuesday to Sunday morning, six hours a day, with experience. Salary: 600 euros”. It’s an offer from a hotel that went viral last May. The conversation was taken over by a Twitter account @I’m a waiter, focused on that sector. However, similar offers are repeated in other industries, from construction to logistics.

Employers insist that they cannot cover the causes vacancies employment These are the lack of qualified personnel, the existence of disincentive factors for work, such as social benefits, and changes in preferences during the pandemic. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) points to another phenomenon: on low wages.

A report released by the organization this week reveals that “Votes with the biggest labor shortages paid an average of 9% less in 2018 than sectors where it’s easier to hire”, encouraging the transfer of workers. Moreover, its authors claim that “sectors where the number of vacancies has increased the most tend to employ more vulnerable workers, such as young people or people with little education, with temporary contracts”. This resistance to improving working conditions and wages has led to a historic threshold of labor shortages in the European Union (EU), creating problems for one in four companies.

Depending on the country and the average salary of a particular sector, there is an uneven distribution of vacancies. IN SpainFor example, the three industries with the most problems in filling jobs pay 11.26 euros per hour, compared to 12.44 euros for the three with the least difficulties. However, neither construction nor hospitality suffered the most dramatic increase in vacancies since 2018, but public administration and defense (+1.8%). And that the average salary is 13.32 euros. This shortfall could be related to the problems of relieving the increasing number of civil servants who are retiring. The other four sectors in which the number of vacancies increased the most (0.3% in total) are water supply and waste management, service and administrative activities, health and social care, and recreational activities.

IN Germany something similar also happens. The sectors with the most problems with hiring workers are mining, construction, accommodation, professional services, administrative services and healthcare. In all of them, an average of 16.65 euros per hour was paid in 2018, compared to 19.91 euros for the best paid. Result? Vacancies grew by an average of 1.5% in the first and 0.77% in the best-paid industry.

history repeats itself in Italywhere the largest increase in vacancies was recorded in construction (+1.5%), where wages were 12.67 euros per hour, compared to 18.47 euros in sectors where the difference increased by barely 0.1 percent.

For all these reasons, unions call for improving wages in the lowest-paid sectors as a recipe for hiring employees, rather than solutions such as mass employment of workers outside the EU: “This could undermine the terms and power of negotiations,” they point out.