Qualified workers in short supply

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CHICAGO, March 20 (UPI) -- A significant number of employers in major economies are having trouble finding qualified workers, a global CareerBuilder survey indicates.

In the survey conducted by Harris Interactive in November involving more than 6,000 hiring managers and human resources personnel, CareerBuilder said 74 percent of respondents from China, 63 percent from Brazil, 57 percent from Russia and 53 percent from India indicated they had job openings currently they could not fill due to the lack of qualified workers.

The survey was conducted in the countries with the 10 largest economies in the world. While the so-called BRIC countries made up the top four on the list, 31 percent of German respondents and 29 percent of Japanese respondents also indicated they had openings for which they could not find qualified workers.

The numbers dropped down to 28 percent in the United States, 26 percent in France, 23 percent in Britain and 18 percent in Italy.

Ranging from 81 percent of respondents from China to 38 percent in the United States, significant numbers of employers indicated the lack of qualified workers was hurting their business.

Employers indicated the situation was hurting revenues and the ability for their companies to grow. They were also suffering from drops in productivity, the survey found.

The hardest positions to fill, the survey found, included positions in information technology, sales and engineering, creative design, research and development, marketing and customer service.

The results of the survey, it could be said with 95 percent certainty, include a margin of error of 1.92 percentage points to 4.9 percentage points, CareerBuilder said.