Invest in a home-grown workforce
Covid ended a decade’s growth in global migration as borders closed and visa processing stalled, according to the OCED, an economic club of nations, which tracked the flow of migrants in 37 economies. Mobility is not expected to return for some time given the persistent travel restrictions.
An outflow of migrants has been especially acute in the UK following its Brexit divorce with the EU, exacerbating labor shortages. Special visa schemes or labor mobility agreements between nations would help to ease these pressures, as could the rise in remote working.
Some governments in central Europe made exceptions for migrants who worked in critical parts of their economies by extending visas for doctors, for instance, or arranging cross-border travel for medical care or agricultural workers.
But it may be necessary for companies to reduce their dependency on migrant labor, which has increased with globalization, especially in southern European countries such as Italy, Spain, Greece and France that have high levels of youth unemployment, as well as the US.
One approach has been to create apprenticeships in public-private partnerships between the state, education and business sectors, lowing the cost burden of training on employers. German-style apprenticeships have long been mooted as a solution to unemployment elsewhere in the EU.
An example of efforts underway is the UK, which has since 2017 forced employers to invest in training the workforce through an apprenticeship levy. The scheme has been plagued with problems, but employers stand to benefit from investing in the training and development of the domestic workforce, particularly with demographic pressures and shrinking workforces in advanced economies as populations age.
It’s worth noting, however, that apprenticeships do not always lend themselves to remote work: what the next generation of business leaders really value is mentorship, and that’s much easier to achieve in person.