There are currently 207 occupations in Flanders on the list of bottleneck professions, meaning employers in these professions are finding it hard to employ people and fill their vacancies.
In the past year, Flemish Employment Service (VDAB) received 400,000 vacancies, which is 36% more than the year before. At the same time, the number of job-seekers has decreased by 7%, leaving an increasing number of employers struggling to fill vacancies.
"There are currently no less than 207 professions on the list of bottleneck professions," the region's Employment Minister Jo Brouns announced in a statement.
VDAB aims to fill these positions, in part through its training that aims to help jobseekers fill vacancies in bottleneck professions, such as prison staff or teachers.
Training guarantees job
A recent study showed that the training offered by VDAB is bearing fruit, as three-quarters of the jobseekers who followed such a course between 2019 and 2021 are now working in a bottleneck profession for which they trained.
"These positive figures mean two things to me: first of all, it has once again been demonstrated that training is a de facto guarantee of a job in a labour market that is currently extremely tight," Brouns stated.
"In addition, we need to widen the pool if we want to tackle the labour shortage fundamentally and raise the employment rate to 80%. Activating job-seekers alone will not suffice. So we must tempt people who are not yet professionally active to get to work."
The number of trainees who successfully completed the training course has also increased from just under half (48%) in 2019 to 57% in 2021. Of this total, 75% are employed in the bottleneck profession for which they were trained.
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"The flow to bottleneck professions is greatest in the Care and Education sector," according to Brouns.
Training on the job
The other 25% are not yet working or are in jobs not related to the training they followed. The lack of experience, attitude and unrealistic expectations of job seekers are reasons why they do not find a job, the research found.
This is why employers are encouraged to be flexible and creative when filling bottleneck vacancies by giving these trainers opportunities to learn skills 'on the job', with internships or work-based learning.
"As far as I am concerned, the shop floor should become the largest school in Flanders to train people with less experience in the best possible way," Broun said.
