With immigration hawks on the rise, the bloc’s tech champions sound the alarm when it comes to recruiting expat workers.
The far right’s recent gains in Europe could be industry’s loss when it comes to recruiting skilled foreign workers.
Leading companies in industrial strongholds such as Germany and the Netherlands — active in areas such as microchip manufacturing — are increasingly worried that anti-immigration policies could make it harder for them to hire the expat workers they need to fill their many boom-driven vacancies.
The companies’ message: Don’t block our ability to tap foreign workers, or it will hamper growth.
Microchip manufacturing, essential for producing everything from cars to smartphones, is poised for rapid expansion in the next few years, especially in already established hubs in Europe, like the greater Eindhoven region in the Netherlands or Dresden in eastern Germany.
Companies in the sector claim that Europe’s demographics and young people’s study preferences mean they can’t rely solely on homegrown talent to meet their employment needs.
So if inflation and deflation aren’t important, just pay elder care workers an amount that makes the job more attractive than most others.
And what happens then? A few carpenters or electricians retrain to become nurses, and then we have even fewer carpenters than before.
You’d just shift the scarcity around.
Immigration… See the Japanese housing market, which has an abundance.
But also your argument can be made about literally anything but the exact status quo in this current moment.
What’s that someone just quit there fast food - less meals available, scarcity all around!
It’s not a realistic understanding of the world.