Companies still have trouble finding qualified employees

There were more than 300,000 people without a job in 2015, says the Slovak Statistics Office. However, there were more than 17,000 jobs available, reads the Hospodárske Noviny daily. The current unemployment rate is at 11.3 percent and it is decreasing; however, the number of vacant jobs has increased and companies have been having trouble finding suitable candidates. The biggest shortage of qualified workers was reported in industrial production, logistics and the information-communication sector. Companies receive plenty of applications for jobs that don't require any professional skills, while finding a qualified worker is getting harder. "When we're looking to fill in some technical post, where we need an educated person with several years of practice and some foreign language skills, we feel a significant lack of applicants," said Volkswagen Slovakia spokesperson Vladimir Machalík.