The course of occurrence and the extent of unfilled demands for labour

Abstract

"Personnel recruitment processes run very differently and turn out to be more ore less time-consuming and problematical. A planned hiring date can pass by with a job being unfilled. The consequence may be a delayed entrance; sometimes the search for appropriate staff is cancelled without a successful hiring. Therefore, unfilled jobs represent unmet labour demand and underachieved employment potential. In this paper we explore different types of unmet labour demand. We differentiate four process types of intended hiring processes. They are analysed on the basis of bivariate correlations with characteristics of the jobs going to be filled, the searching firms and the hired persons. We use data of the annual Job Vacancy Survey of the IAB (Institute for Employment Research) for the German job market from 2000 to 2007. We can show, that about 55 to 60 % of the hiring cases run in due time. Insofar hiring processes are predominantly running without frictions. On the other hand 40 to 45 % of planned hiring dates pass by. Among these, in about 20 % of the cases firms are waiting for an already found candidate to fill the position. In about 20 to 25 % of the cases firms are still searching for staff. Particularly in the lastmentioned cases firms involve the public employment service. During the last years about 6 to 12 % of searching firms had to cancel the search without a successful hiring. Personnel recruitment problems - i.e. delayed entrances or cancelled personnel search - are often arising with higher qualification requirements. On the one hand this indicates perhaps higher skilled shortages; on the other hand this may indicate exaggerated requirements. In case of hiring delays firms often make wage concessions." (Authors' abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Noll, S., Heckmann, M. & Rebien, M. (2009): Erscheinungsformen und Ausmaß ungedeckter Arbeitskräftenachfrage in der Verlaufsperspektive. (IAB-Forschungsbericht 07/2009), Nürnberg, 72 p.