The shortage of IT specialists in EU - predictions, solutions, consequences.

In the last decade, an increasing demand for high skilled hi-tech workers and engineers could be observed in most EU leading economies. From this point the ability of national education system to supply businesses with qualified specialists seen as crucial in driving post-recession growth and innovation.

Paradoxically enough, but the growing importance of IT coincide with rather different trend in education where popularity of hi-tech trades in falling swiftly. Result local institutes and universities do not produce enough qualified graduates while at the same time aging generation of old-school engineers comes to retirement.

What might be seen as a solution to the growing shortage of specialists, namely immigration and internalization of labour stumbles on the growing multiculturalism and immigration issues in most of Europe.

Based on this we conducted series of studies aimed to identify the current state of things on EU labor markets, main trends and solutions which can pick up the pluck on the growing shortage of hi-tech specialists.

The strategy of choice appeared as Nearshoring - as it provides two-way benefits to EU businesses - from one side enabling to access much-needed resources, while helping to explore and expand to developing neighbouring markets using local expertise of nearshore providers.

To bring this topic up and find out opinion of our readers and members of sister Nearshore Professionals Group on Linkedin we started series of discussions and pools (on the right side of this blog) where you can express your take on this problem, its solution and future trends.