No paper document, just an online version. To illustrate the enormous challenge it too faces in terms of digitalisation, Luxembourg’s national employment agency (Adem) played the symbolic card on Tuesday 4 June when it presented its activity report for the year 2023, which ended with an unemployment rate of 5.5%. The challenge is to “give more autonomy to jobseekers and employers who want it,” emphasised Adem’s director, , as labour minister (CSV) looked on.
Practices are continuing to change, with 24% of registrations made online last year, compared with 18% in 2022. More than a third (36%) of employers advertised their vacancies online (compared with 29% a year earlier). At the same time, almost twice as many CVs were registered on the Adem job board (15,000 last year).
For Schlesser, digitalisation should also make it possible to “free up internal resources to devote more time to people who are further away from the job market, by, for example, coaching for young jobseekers with no career plans.”
Digitalisation, then, could be the word of the year, especially as Adem has announced that it is working on the deployment of a matching tool incorporating AI in collaboration with the European Network of Public Employment Services, piloted by the EU. But there were other lessons to be learned from this annual report…
Job vacancies
At the end of last year, the number of vacancies stood at 6,997, down 36% year-on-year. Five sectors were particularly affected: business consultancy (-60.4%), IT (-56.7%), transport and logistics (-53.4%), hotels and catering (-45.5%), and construction (-45%).
This figure of -36% illustrates one of the problems faced by Adem in its search for a picture of the job market that is as close to reality as possible: many job vacancies escape its radar. Probably two or three more than the number of jobs declared, as Alex Erpelding, deputy head of the employers department, recently told Delano’s sister publication Paperjam.
Yet this declaration is a legal obligation for companies. The Labour Code even lays down penalties for those who are careless.
On 30 April this year, the number of vacancies was close to 8,000, for 17,596 available jobseekers.
The curves had converged in 2022, but this is no longer the case. Infographic source: Adem
Shortage
That said, the declaration of vacancies is not a guarantee of recruitment. As proof of this, more than half (807) of the 1,467 job offers declared in the “IT research and development” sector remained unfilled.
Accounting (685 of the 1,489 positions available went unfilled), credit analysis and banking risk (378/504), financial analysis and engineering (520/852) and legal defence and advice (420/933) rounded out the top five of the list of fields that were proportionally the most difficult to recruit for.
Languages
Some interesting data was provided by the Jobinsights.lu dashboard, which offers virtually real-time monitoring of a job market where three-quarters of the 518,000 employees are foreigners. In 2023, Adem noted that half of the jobs registered with it required knowledge of more than one language. “The most frequently required language is French, which is mentioned in 72% of the jobs,” noted the agency.
This is followed by English (required in 58% of jobs), German (31%) and Luxembourgish (24%).
Tests
The objective, as stated by director Schlesser and reiterated in the report, is “to get to know our customers better, so that we can serve them better and target our efforts.”
For Adem, “serving them better” means, for example, introducing language tests available online. The advantage of these tests is that they enable Adem to rely on objective results rather than simply the jobseeker’s declarations, using a method that is recognised at European level for Luxembourgish, French, German and English. A certificate is issued on completion. “It is appreciated by employers.”
In 2023, some 12,000 jobseekers took these tests, with an average of 2.5 languages each.
Training
Schlesser spoke several times of “reskilling” and “upskilling.” With more than 1,000 contracts signed, 2023 marked an all-time high for adult apprenticeships.
Adem, which says it wants to invest in training, points to the good results achieved with its target groups: 5,200 jobseekers took at least one training course in 2023 (compared with 3,434 in 2024). Over one year, the proportion of unemployed people enrolled in training has quadrupled compared to 2019.
Immigration
“Good results quickly!” Adem is satisfied with the impact of on recruitment. The law, which , allows third-country nationals holding a Luxembourg residence permit to work freely as soon as they arrive in the country.
In the last four months of 2023, 1,445 of the 3,979 certificates requested were granted on the basis of this law. “77% of these were for occupations in short supply,” said Adem.
This article was first published in French on . It has been translated and edited for Delano.