The study places Romania alongside Brazil and behind only Japan, Peru and Hong Kong in terms of employers' difficulties of finding talents for their vacant jobs, with 61 percent of employers complaining about the situation. The percentage is much higher than the global average of 38 percent and the EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) average of 32 percent.

The proportion of Romanian employers that face such problems increased by 21 percent since last year, when only 40 percent of them reported difficulties; the rate of such issues is now at a six-year peak, shows the study sent on Tuesday.

For the third consecutive year, the businesses report the worst problems in hiring skilled workers and engineers; car drivers are the next category where the labour demand exceeds the available workforce. More managers, IT staff, sales representatives, accounting and finances experts, sales managers, hotel and restaurant service people and unskilled workers are also needed.

According to 48 percent of the responding employers, the main cause of the talent deficit is the lack of specific professional skills (hard skills); 17 percent (up from 11 percent in 2014) complain about the wage expectations exceeding the offer; 15 percent (down from 21 percent) explain the situation by the lack of experience; 14 percent mention the lack of interpersonal, relating and communication skills (soft skills), including insufficient professionalism (7 pct), collaboration and teamwork problems (7 pct) and detail-orientation, planning and organization issues (5 percent).

"Most of Romania's competitive advantage over the past years consisted in the well-educated, skilled, creative and flexible workforce. As such talents become scarcer or more difficult to attract, it is normal for the employers to worry about the decrease of competitiveness," ManpowerGroup Romania manager Valentin Petrof explained. (Source: actmedia.eu)