The phenomenon of Vocational training (FP), as it is already evident that it is the training most requested by companies looking for employees in Galicia. More than a third of the job offers published in the Community in 2023 correspond to workers from a medium or higher level training cycle (36.74% of the total), surpassing those with a college degree (34.26%) and double the offers that require the ESO (15.95%) and the Baccalaureate (11.08%) according to the XXVII edition of the Adecco Infoemploi Report.
Confirmation of a change accentuated since the pandemic of Covid-19 and its impact on the economic fabric, although the reasons respond to a longer process, as pointed out by José Oreiro, director of Adecco in Galicia. The perception that a university degree implies more job opportunities is therefore outdated, although the weight of FP in job demand decreased between 2021 and 2022, after exceeding 40% in 2020, “FP has come to stay because it is what businesses demand” says Oreiro.
In fact, it is no longer rare to find graduate students with a university degree or even masters with difficulties in accessing the job market. A casuistry that responds to multiple reasons, such as the shortage of professionals in professions such as administration, mechanics or electricians for example. Furthermore, in the case of Galicia and Spain, the cultural factor is evident since “There are still prejudices” towards the FP, such as salary prospects, which no longer correspond to reality, as the director of Adecco in Galicia points out.
Furthermore, it highlights the “greater adaptability» of this training compared to university training, with a greater academic weight that makes it difficult to find orientation in everyday life and the reality of companies. One of the reasons that motivate the implementation of work-study vocational training, whose objective is to train students both in educational centers and in the companies themselves, where they acquire specific knowledge intended for their future employment.
“The challenge for the future is to be ableexpand the academic offering in the most demanded fields by companies, depending on the economic fabric of each territory,” adds Oreiro, who highlights how, increasingly, companies are relying on FP as a solution to adapt to a constantly changing economic reality.
The most in-demand jobs
Looking in detail at the jobs offered by companies to vocational training students in 2023, the first thing that stands out is administrative workwhich represents 6.05% of the total, followed by maintenance technicians, whose demand increased to 3.84% in 2023 – more than double the 1.44% it represented in 2022 – and in third place in sales, 2.99% of the total offered after a decrease compared to the previous edition – in 2022 they were 1.85%. At the gates of the podium, the positions of professionals trained in vocational training stand out: operators (2.65% of the total), support technicians (2.03%), engineering managers (1.99%) and administrative assistants (1.8%).
He isSector services is once again the main protagonist of the increase in demand for workers with vocational training, since it represents 23.97% of job offers for this training group – an increase compared to the 21.33% it represented in 2022 and 16.3% more than before the pandemic. This is followed by the branches of IT (6.29% of the total supply), metallurgy, mineral processing and steel (6.18%), other industrial areas (5.07%) and the automotive industry (4.05%).
Considering the functional areas towards which vocational training jobs are oriented, the engineering and production in first place, with 32.45%, followed by administrative and secretarial services (17.96%) and technology, IT and telecommunications (11.68%).
