The industry warns of its great burden: with current training, up to 15,000 positions cannot be filled
The Generalitat considers that the lack of talent is due to young Catalans lacking a "culture of effort".
BarcelonaThe industrial sector warns of a major mismatch between training supply and labor demand in the sector. A study carried out by KPMG, along with Amec (the national association of exporting companies), the College of Industrial Engineers of Catalonia, the FemCAT foundation, and the Foundation for Industry, indicates that 58% of the positions required by the sector cannot be filled: while 26,000 positions are opened annually in industrial companies, only 11,000 people are trained for the sector each year.
Faced with this data, the Director General of Industry of the Generalitat, Xavier Roca, has stated that Catalan youth lack a "culture of effort" and that children are "coddled" from I3 onwards. "No matter how many positions and master's degrees we open, if we don't have students, it will be of little use," Roca said at the presentation of the report at the CaixaBank All in One headquarters.
Faced with a shortfall of 15,000 positions, industrial companies have warned of a lack of candidates and have identified this factor as one of the major obstacles to the sector's development and competitiveness. This gap is further amplified if we look at the reality in some territories: while the province of Barcelona concentrates the largest portion of training (72% of the total), it is not enough to cover the high demand from the sector and only manages to fill 43% of the positions.
In Girona, this problem goes even further, and in the province, only 24% of the jobs required by the industrial sector are filled. In the demarcations of Tarragona and Lleida, the percentage of positions that cannot be filled in relation to the training provided represents 44% of the total.
Without commercial profiles
The report also identifies as a "structural mismatch" the volume of profiles being trained in the country compared to the demand generated. According to the study, commercial profiles –linked to technical sales– are experiencing a complete mismatch. That is, not a single commercial vacancy in the industrial sector is being filled with talent generated by the Catalan education system. The gap is explained because there are currently no specific programs within the training offer that cover this specialization, which accounts for 18% of open positions within the sector. Currently, this talent shortage is being replaced by engineers who are learning to develop the role.
Furthermore, the report also warns that management profiles and those in innovation and transformation are also not "sufficient" to meet demand, presenting a mismatch of 87% and 77%, respectively. "The necessary volume of professionals capable of leading complex industrial projects, managing technical teams, or driving digitalization and R&D+I initiatives is not being generated," the study assures. Operation and technical profiles are the most covered, although they are only able to cover 51% and 38% of the demand.
In a round table following the presentation of the results, the general director of Dicomol, Estela Sanchez, highlighted the need to make industry a more "attractive" sector. For their part, the director of Human Resources at BonÀrea, Xavier Moreno, and Núria Pairot, senior manager of People & Organization at Hipra, pointed out the territorial mismatches in the offer. "We have been suffering for talent for twenty years," noted Moreno, while Pairot stated that they are currently unable to fill up to 250 positions in Girona.
The report concludes that eight out of ten companies have difficulty finding qualified profiles, and indicates that the talent shortage is a “limiting factor” for competitiveness. The industry will only be able to grow if it has the necessary talent, it is inferred.
“It is not only a quantitative challenge but also a qualitative one: training does not adapt to specialization and transversal competencies; the educational system must be reinvented”, assured the director of the Fundació per la Indústria, Ana Navés. In the same vein, the president of Amec, Joan Tristany, highlighted that Catalan industry “plays in a very international league”, but that talent “determines the ceiling” it can reach. “Everything is talent, it goes beyond the production line of the plant”, Tristany remarked.