Employers fighting labour shortages mostly use measures that win people from other employers. That works for the firm that does it and changes nothing for the market. Our reading of field research by Eurofound, the EU foundation for living and working conditions, is that only partnerships with education and recruitment from abroad add people to the pool, and the international route is held back by procedure, not by a lack of candidates. An employer with a lasting shortage needs at least one measure that creates supply, not only measures that compete for it.
What employers actually do
Eurofound studied organisations across a range of member states and documented what they do against shortages. The measures fall into recognisable groups. Employers work with vocational schools, trainers and employment services, help shape curricula and meet graduates early. They offer more than pay: flexible hours, remote work, help with housing, childcare or health insurance. They recruit more cleverly through social media, employee referrals and a wider catchment area. And in selection they shift weight from diplomas to aptitude, soft skills and the ability to learn.
Underneath sits a problem that predates the recent peak. In the foundation's company survey from 2019, most European workplaces already struggled to find people with the right skills. At the same time, a part of the workforce is overqualified for its own job. The shortage is partly in how skills are spread over jobs, not only in headcount.
Winning versus growing
Referrals, employer branding and better conditions are useful. But they move scarce people from one employer to another. If every firm in a sector does the same, the sector ends up where it started, with higher costs. Only the ties with education and training create people who were not available before. Selecting on aptitude rather than diplomas sits in between: it does not add people to the labour market, but it widens the group an employer can hire from.
International recruitment is the only route with clear unused capacity. Many employers want to use it and fewer do. The barriers they name are administrative: permits, slow recognition of qualifications, language, housing. Those are problems of process knowledge, not of supply.
What this does not show
The research rests on a small set of case studies. It shows which kinds of measures exist, not how common they are or how well each works. The skills figure dates from before the pandemic and before the peak of the shortage, so it marks that the problem is old, not how large it is today. The firms reported their own measures, and failures rarely make it into such interviews. The study covers Europe, not the Netherlands alone. Evidence that referral programmes raise total employment in a sector would weaken our reading.
What you can do
- Sort your current measures by what they do: win people from competitors, or add people to the pool. Most employers find nothing in the latter category.
- Pick one route that creates supply and commit to it for years: a partnership with a school, a traineeship, a retraining path.
- Rewrite vacancies to select on aptitude where the diploma is a proxy rather than a legal requirement.
- If you consider hiring abroad, map the procedure before the first vacancy: permits, recognition of qualifications, language support and housing.
- Keep referrals and better conditions, but do not count them as a solution to a shortage that is sector-wide.