While the unemployment rates in the EU have edged up since last year, the figures for each country vary considerably. The lowest unemployment rates are in Austria (4.5 %), the Netherlands (5.3 %) and Germany and Luxembourg (both 5.5 %). The highest rates are in Spain (25.1 %) and Greece (23.1 %). The UK has 8 % unemployment, and both France and Italy have unemployment above 10 %.

Youth unemployment presents its own set of issues for the region—workers under the age of 25 have to contend with a jobless rate 2.6 times that of older workers. And again, this figure varies widely from country to country. In Germany the difference between the two age groups is 1.5 times, in Sweden it’s 4.4 times higher for those under 25 years of age.

Even these figures, however, fail to reveal the complexity of employment challenges across the Eurozone region. Many workers are suffering under frustrating under-employment, and even in some countries where unemployment is high, key skills are in critically short supply and job vacancies are going unfilled.

The 2013 European Vacancy Monitor found that: More than “50 % of new hires were made on a temporary basis... [However, in those] countries acknowledged for their flexible labor markets, such as the United Kingdom, Denmark and Estonia, employers are more likely to recruit permanent workers because of the relative ease of dismissal...”.

All of these figures point to the fact that companies of all sizes are actively reviewing their workforce to find new ways to optimize how skills are sourced and engaged. As organizations seek new strategies to improve competitiveness, the key issue of skills mobility—how to match the available opportunities with the right resources—becomes more critical.

3 key employment trends across the region are:

1. Assignments and projects, not jobs: the focus on having a job is decreasing as both employers and employees seek to create and access projects and assignments instead of ‘jobs’. Ultimately, this will greatly impact the way companies view their overall workforce. However, increased demand for flexibility as well as exposure to higher risk levels are a consequence for organizations managing many labor categories.

2. Talent moves more regularly: talented employees have generally stopped managing their careers inside one company or even one industry, and instead look at their careers as a collection of assignments or contracts. For this reason, counting on internal talent to fill key roles over the medium to long term is no longer a reliable workforce strategy for many companies. Instead, companies must look at the talent pipeline more holistically—internally and externally—to access the skills they need.

3. The contingent workforce is now a permanent (although often restructured) feature: already, around one-third of the talent that companies rely upon is ‘outside their walls’. We also know that this ‘outside’ talent comprises a growing proportion of independent contractors or Interim Managers—people seeking work on their own terms and pursuing non-traditional work styles such as retirees, micropreneurs and the self-employed. Contingent workers are no longer a temporary feature of workforces, they are staying longer and providing critical skills that cannot be purchased in other ways.

For more on the employment trends and issues across the EU, you can download this new report: How to Adapt to the Talent Gap.