European Talent is on the Move: The Latest Migration Insights

Worldwide, half of the CEOs plan to increase their headcount next year, but 63% worry about the availability of key skills for their firm.

To address this challenge, the global labor markets are becoming more and more dynamic and talent migrations are spiking. Europe in particular is one of the regions with the most labor movement and we wanted to explore what is causing these movements, who is moving, and why.

To answer these questions, we ran a talent migration analysis measuring net inflow and outflow of LinkedIn members by geography and specific skills. Here a few highlights from our European report we just released:

• Switzerland and Germany saw the largest net talent gains within Europe, their workforces growing 1% and 0.4% respectively
• 42% of people who move to Paris, France, were students or recent graduates - the highest percentage of recent graduate inflow of any city, globally.
• Switzerland is the European country with most dynamic labor force -- about 69% of its population is willing to relocate to a destination further than 100 miles (161km). The top destinations for Swiss movers were Germany and France.
• Of the skills most common to international job movers, three of the top five were in STEM roles (science, technology, engineering, and maths). However, social media marketing tops the list.
• Of all the countries we analyzed, Spain is the country with the highest net migration loss -- 0.3%.

In partnership with PWC, we also analyzed the motivation behind these moves. It turns out that there is huge variation in the ability and willingness of employees to move to wherever their skills are in highest demand -- i.e. some countries are more adaptable than others:

• The Netherlands is the best place for talent to re-skill or move between sectors largely due to its multilingual workforce and diversity of international businesses
• Only 17% of Germans consider money one of the top three factors for moving, but a good skills fit is much more important than in the UK and France.
• LinkedIn’s Talent Brand Index (TBI) measures a firm’s online appeal to potential employees; a strong TBI can cut staff turnover by 28%

You can read the full results for Europe in the International Talent Migration Report. This research was conducted as part of LinkedIn’s strategic vision: to build out the Economic Graph, a digital representation of the global economy.

* image by NASA