From the industry that works with custom materials to tourism to information technology, call center and medicine, many sectors in the country are struggling to find employees, which has often led to claims of highly qualified people providing staff.
Fasoni is not finding employees
The National Employment Service reported that in 2019, it collected from businesses about 49 thousand job offers. Half of them, more than 25 thousand, belong to the fason business factories.
Fason sector businesses across the country, from Shkodra to Gjirokastra, have sounded the alarm that they are facing serious labor shortages. Even now that the pandemic is fading, staff shortages are preventing some factories that have increased orders from being rebuilt. Due to the experience created, the number of new contracts is growing rapidly. This has been shown by the increase of exports in the sector, by 16 and 10% in the last two years, but on the other hand, finding new employees has become a difficult mission.
Gjergj Liqejza, administrator of “Albania Trikot”, which operates in the city of Shkodra, said that it has become very difficult to find labor, due to two phenomena related to each other. The first is immigration, which makes some people flee abroad. Immigration, on the other hand, discourages girls and women from working because immigrants bring in income. This is typical for the Shkodra area, said Mr. Liqejza.
Tourism leaves claims for professionals, do not find people
Hotels, especially in tourist areas away from Tirana, where the workforce is concentrated, are in crisis for employees. A few years ago, the hotel sector had large reservations about the lack of qualified staff, but currently their claims have dropped. Enough to have people, that they take over the training themselves. “There is little interest in the workforce.
It is enough to want to work. We have carried out the necessary trainings, although at high costs for us, because in the first case, they either fled abroad, or moved to the peak of the season in the South of the country “, says Fatos Çerenishti, head of” FAFA Resort ” in Golem, which has invested significantly in recent years in increasing hotel capacity, through a new complex, in response to increasing demand from foreign tourists.
Even in the mountainous tourist areas of Valbona, the lack of employees has started to hinder businesses for further expansion. Hostel administrators there claim they are struggling with service due to a lack of manpower. Local young people have become seasonal workers for EU countries, not preferring to work for a monthly salary of 20 thousand ALL in hotels in the area. Hiring employees from other cities is unaffordable, as services are only covered by hostel relatives who are lame in service.
Call center, quality employees leave
The call center sector is suffering to a more moderate extent the need for staff. There are two types of emigration in this sector: that of poor people and those who flee for a better life. The call center sector, one of the largest employers in the country, especially young people, is suffering the latter.
At the numerical level, market operators claim that they are not feeling any significant problems with the departure of employees.
Executives of Intercom Data Service (IDS), one of the largest operators in the country, with about 3 thousand employees, claim that the problem for their sector is that those who are leaving are quality and experienced employees. This is a barrier to increase the level of service, to switch from call center, to value-added services.
The concern is the fact that quality employees are not leaving for payment issues, as the call center has much higher salary levels than e.g. fason industry, but they seek a better life. According to a preliminary estimate, it is generally not just 20-year-olds who are leaving, but those who have gained experience, have a new family, or plan to start a family.
Lorenc Goga, administrator of Facile.it, a company that provides web marketing services, stated some time ago that finding employees has often become a challenge for the activity. The lack of qualified staff in ICT services has prevented him from signing a new service contract with a foreign company.
The contract was for services of a higher level than web marketing and the payments were promising, but the lack of qualified staff for these services is becoming an obstacle to its signing. More than emigration, Goga blames the country’s education system, which in the third decade of transition is failing to meet the needs of the labor market.
Medicine is running out, 78% of doctors want to leave
As a result of mass migration and other factors, Albania has the lowest physician coverage rate for the population. Albania is ranked in the country that had fewer doctors per 10 thousand inhabitants in Europe, even in 2019, according to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), updated in February 2021.
WHO has also published data in years, when in 2018, the number of doctors per 10 thousand inhabitants in the country reached a record 21.58, falling again a year later, reflecting the emigration that has involved the medical staff, mainly in Germany .
The second country with the least number of doctors in relation to the population, according to WHO data, is Turkey, with an indicator of 18.7, with the latest data updated for 2018. Next are Cyprus (19.5), Poland (23.8), Bosnia (21.62). Of the countries in the region, Serbia has the most medical staff (31.1).
In Europe, the record for an expanded body of medical staff is held by Italy, with 80 doctors per 10 thousand inhabitants in 2019, followed by Georgia (70.7), France (66.3), Greece (62.3).
The number of physicians available to the population was one of the main indicators where international reports focused on the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The lower this indicator, along with health expenditures relative to the size of the economy, the harder it would be for countries to cope with the pressure that the pandemic would exert on their hospital systems.
The German Friedrich Ebert Foundation Tirana has conducted a study, the findings of which show that the departure of doctors remains a worrying factor, which is experienced by 78% of doctors (24% of whom are ready to leave immediately , while 54% would leave if given the chance) ./ Monitor
