Five out of ten Brazilian industries have difficulty in hiring because of the lack of qualified workers. The vacancy exists, but often the company is unable to fill it. This is what a survey by the National Confederation of Industry (CNI) reveals, released today (11).

Entitled Special Survey - Lack of Qualified Workers, the study shows that the shortage of skilled labor affects mainly the biofuels industry, where 70% of companies say they have difficulties with the qualification of workers.

Next come the furniture (64%), clothing and rubber products (tied with 62%), textile and equipment machinery (60% each) industries.

According to the survey, the job with the greatest shortage of qualified workers is that of an operator, which affects 96% of the companies that reported the problem.

The list continues with employees of technical level, which reaches 90% of the industries that face the lack of employees with the appropriate training. There is also a shortage of qualifications in the areas of sales and marketing (82%), administrative (81%), engineering (77%), management (75%) and research and development (74%).

Loss of competitiveness 

For the CNI, the lack of skilled workers should worsen as the economy recovers, becoming one of the main obstacles to increasing productivity and competitiveness in the country.

The organization suggests training and requalification efforts in the short term and improving the quality of basic education in Brazil, with priority for professional education in the medium and long term.

Low qualifications, the survey points out, make it difficult to adopt new technologies in 31% of large industries and in 13% of smaller industries.

Among the companies with a shortage of qualified labor, 72% say that the search for efficiency and the reduction of waste is compromised, 60% say that the maintenance or the increase in the quality of the products has losses and 27% say that they stop increasing the production.

Obstacles 

At a time when the global industry is undergoing the transition to industry 4.0, marked by technology, the CNI calls for basic education to emphasize the areas of science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics. For the National Confederation of Industry, basic education should also encourage interdisciplinarity (simultaneous use of various areas of knowledge), decision making and problem solving.

The study highlights the low insertion of vocational education in the country. While the percentage of high school students enrolled in vocational courses exceeds 40% in Germany, Denmark, France and Portugal and reaches around 70% in Austria and Finland, the percentage reaches only 9.7% in Brazil.

In the country, about two out of every ten students who complete high school reach higher education. The rest, including those who have dropped out of school, enter the job market without preparation.

Worker qualification policies 

According to the survey, 91% of companies with a shortage of skilled workers promote policies and actions to deal with the problem. And 85% of the industries affected by the problem carry out training within the company, 42% promote training outside the company, 28% strengthen the employee retention policy, offering salaries and benefits, and 13% close partnerships with educational institutions.

Even training the workforce, 53% of the entrepreneurs affirm that the poor quality of basic education creates difficulties in investments in training and 49% point out low interest of the workers in the improvement programs.

The survey was carried out from October 1 to 11, 2019, with 1,946 manufacturing and mining industries from all over the country. Of this total, 794 are small, 687 are medium and 465 are large.