High-tech firms desperate for skilled migrant labour 02/11/2007 00:00

2 November 2007

MADRID -  The Spanish high-tech sector is crying out for highly-qualified experienced labor, with 10,000 overseas workers needed in order not to cut off growth in the industry.

According to the domestic industry association AETIC, which directly groups together some 300 electronic, information technology and telecommunications firms, and a further 1,000 indirectly, the job turnover rate in the industry is 30 percent as companies steal employees from their rivals.

The chairman of AETIC, Jesús Banegas, welcomes the recently unveiled initiative of the European Commission to introduce a so-called blue-card visa system for highly skilled workers along the lines of the green card in the United States.

This is a "magnificent idea" Banegas believes. The high-tech sector, he adds, is growing at a rate three times that of the economy as a whole, and the sector needs an urgent solution to the skilled labor shortage problem in order to prevent economic "strangulation." This is even more the case given that the construction sector, one of the pillars of Spain's strong economic growth, is starting to slow.

Banegas also believes that immigrants are needed to offset the falling number of students in Spain doing technical degrees, he says.

[Copyright EL PAÍS, 2007]

Subject: Spanish news