According to Alistair Cox the chief executive officer of foremost recruitment agency Hays, because politicians are scared to voice out their much – needed opinions on immigration, there is now a looming threat the continued development of important social infrastructure and, more importantly, the economic recovery of Britain.

The boss of the recruitment firm has equally called on the government to completely forget about its so-called net migration target which he claims are worsening the already bad shortage of skills in the UK.

Mr. Cox could not be further from the truth. In fact, the present policy of the UK Government on migration needs to be closely reviewed with a view to revising it immediately. This call is necessary in view of the fact that presently a lot of companies in the key sectors of energy, engineering, manufacturing, construction and IT are having difficulties finding qualified candidates to fill in vacancies in their respective companies. This invariably means that important on-going projects like the HS2 or even the enlarged new airport capacity are already endangered.
These revelations were made by the FTSE 250 boss during the occasion of the launching ceremony of his company’s 2014 Global Skills Index. The Index provides an analysis of economic of job markets in 31 countries, most of the data generated by Hays using up-to-date data. According to their report, presently in the UK there is a talent mismatch of 9.6 out of 10. This reading enumerates the gap between the competencies and skills which companies require and their capacity to source for them in the labour market. In summary, a higher number simply means that these companies are experiencing challenges in getting qualified personnel.

It is indeed ironical that the UK score was only bested by the United States with 10 points, along with Ireland, Portugal, and Spain, which all lost a lot of their talented and skilled workers when they went abroad during the recessions in their respective countries. On the flip side, countries that possessed very durable apprenticeship and employee training programs like Germany scored just 3.3.

Indeed the facts have spoken for themselves. According to the Hays boss, presently there are many high-level employment opportunities being created in the country which cannot be easily filled by UK citizens. In his view, he seriously doubts that the situation would improve, especially not with the economy still struggling with recovery.
Mr. Hays finally insisted that the country must make a choice: it is either that we continue to complain about this situation and watch our economic situation go lower than it really should be. Or we can collectively as a nation refuse to accept such a gloomy picture. He however cautions that the correct answer is not going to be easy because people would really not like the necessary things that must be done in order to correct the negative trend.