Report by UK lobbying group predicts job increases in 2015

World Today

In Britain, a new employment survey found for the first time since the global recession in 2008, that more companies expect to create jobs next year. However, the biggest threat to the U.K.’s rapidly growing economy is a skills gap.

CCTV America’s Richard Bestic reported this story from London.

According to a new trends survey by the country’s biggest business lobby group, the Confederation of British Industry, and the consulting firm Accenture, more people across the U.K. are expected to be employed in 2015.

Evidence of Britain’s stellar economic growth is witnessed by the flowering of cranes across city skylines, but the good news comes with caution, as firms struggle to hire workers with the right skills.

Demand is such that a study by employment group Manpower found that bricklayers needed to be brought in to the U.K. from across Europe and were being paid twice as much.

“Immigration is definitely part of the solution, but on its own, it’s not enough. We also need to, and that’s employers and government have to do much more to help upskill the UK workforce too,” Katja Hall CBI deputy director general said.

But concerns over skills shortages aren’t confined merely to industry and construction. The digital arena is another place where skills are in short supply and Accenture says that although the industry employs a million people in the U.K. there are still 158,000 job vacancies.