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This was a frustrating article to read. I got the sense the author missed something. Spain is part of the EU common market which numbers 500 million people - ho

This was a frustrating article to read. I got the sense the author missed something. Spain is part of the EU common market which numbers 500 million people - how is it that this is only a problem for Spain, and why can't they recruit fellow EU citizens to make-up the shortfall?

DanBC 10y ago
There are EU wide shortages of some professions (eg nurses, especially mental health nurses; doctors, especially mental health doctors (and especially paediatric MH doctors)) and these professions take some time to train people.
- NetStrikeForce 10y ago
  What? No. There are countless unemployed nurses in Spain, Portugal and Ireland. Ask the NHS how many they bring in every year.
  - DanBC 10y ago
    ...and yet there are still nursing shortages, with many unfilled posts. These are jobs that have been advertised but unfilled.
    - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
      Any proof?
    - mapt 10y ago
      Suggestion: You're not allowed to use the term 'unfilled' in this conversation. Use the term 'unfilled at the listed salary'.
  - desas 10y ago
    They bring in 1000s of nurses from the EU and 1000s from outside the EU. I'm not sure that it's true to say that they're all unemployed when they're poached though.
    - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
      They probably are. The Spanish healthcare system pays fairly well, but right now it's difficult to get in. The NHS doesn't pay really well. Nurses brought from South Europe are getting offered between £23k and £25k, including for hospitals in London zone 1. That makes me doubt that many nurses poached from Spain were actually employed. Source: Someone close to me is a Spanish nurse working for the NHS :)
UVB-76 10y ago
Few thoughts off the top of my head: a) Language barrier — Spanish is only the fifth most spoken language in the EU, with only 15% speaking it as a first or second language (around half of whom are Spanish citizens); b) Lower salaries on offer (as others have noted) as opposed to working in the UK, Germany, or France; b) Given the economic situation in the country, and high levels of unemployment, Spain isn't anywhere near as attractive to skilled migrants as the other leading EU economies.
- Raticide 10y ago
  Well, at least they won't have to compete with the UK soon.
  - e12e 10y ago
    Just because UK leaves the EU, that doesn't mean it won't still welcome foreign workers (especially from the EU). When I was last on Iceland, I met a handful of professionals working in software engineering and engineering - all but one of them was from the EU (a few from Spain). Anecdote, sure, but I got the impression a lot of businesses on Iceland hired various foreign workers (not to the exclusion of Icelanders, just to fill in a shortage of skilled workers - perceived or real). And then there's Norway, which participates via the EEC, but isn't an EU member. And the UK has made some noise about getting a similar deal.
cloakandswagger 10y ago
This assumption is the same mistake made by almost all supranational federalists. Europe is composed of different countries with vastly different languages, cultures and economic conditions. Just because they're technically "joined" together via treaties doesn't mean labor is going to naturally distribute throughout the union.
- themartorana 10y ago
  And yet they thought a shared currency would be no big deal.
  - cloakandswagger 10y ago
    Don't get me started. Economists from around the world were adamant that the Euro was a terrible idea when it was founded. Binding dozens of wildly differing economies to one currency controlled by one central bank has always been a pipe dream, but it takes decades for it to start to unravel.
    - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
      The politicians knew a shared currency without sharing other aspects was a bad idea, but they gambled that as the problems became manifest, they would be solved by greater unity. Maybe that was stupid, but it's a different kind of stupid than not listening to the economists.
  - mapt 10y ago
    No, this could totally have worked. Once the Euro was implemented, they had a choice: Either do what's necessary for real large-scale labor-market mobility (where migration becomes a typical part of life and a substantial part of every paycheck gets remitted back to one's family), and-or create a fiscal union where Spanish spending gets subsidized by German taxes for the sake of unity. They opened the door a bit to the former legally but didn't force the issue sufficiently to make the numbers work, nor did they let economies collapse in ways that cause large-scale migration (preferring to buoy them up with unsustainable debt). They did little towards the latter. This was inadequate, and caused a massive, entirely foreseeable debt crisis because the ability to print money for the use of a single national economy that desperately needs inflation, was lost. The thing that the Eurodollar politicians were trying to force the 2000's politicians to do, did not come to pass.

DanBC 10y ago

There are EU wide shortages of some professions (eg nurses, especially mental health nurses; doctors, especially mental health doctors (and especially paediatric MH doctors)) and these professions take some time to train people.

NetStrikeForce 10y ago
What? No. There are countless unemployed nurses in Spain, Portugal and Ireland. Ask the NHS how many they bring in every year.
- DanBC 10y ago
  ...and yet there are still nursing shortages, with many unfilled posts. These are jobs that have been advertised but unfilled.
  - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
    Any proof?
  - mapt 10y ago
    Suggestion: You're not allowed to use the term 'unfilled' in this conversation. Use the term 'unfilled at the listed salary'.
- desas 10y ago
  They bring in 1000s of nurses from the EU and 1000s from outside the EU. I'm not sure that it's true to say that they're all unemployed when they're poached though.
  - NetStrikeForce 10y ago
    They probably are. The Spanish healthcare system pays fairly well, but right now it's difficult to get in. The NHS doesn't pay really well. Nurses brought from South Europe are getting offered between £23k and £25k, including for hospitals in London zone 1. That makes me doubt that many nurses poached from Spain were actually employed. Source: Someone close to me is a Spanish nurse working for the NHS :)

UVB-76 10y ago

Few thoughts off the top of my head: a) Language barrier — Spanish is only the fifth most spoken language in the EU, with only 15% speaking it as a first or second language (around half of whom are Spanish citizens); b) Lower salaries on offer (as others have noted) as opposed to working in the UK, Germany, or France; b) Given the economic situation in the country, and high levels of unemployment, Spain isn't anywhere near as attractive to skilled migrants as the other leading EU economies.

Raticide 10y ago
Well, at least they won't have to compete with the UK soon.
- e12e 10y ago
  Just because UK leaves the EU, that doesn't mean it won't still welcome foreign workers (especially from the EU). When I was last on Iceland, I met a handful of professionals working in software engineering and engineering - all but one of them was from the EU (a few from Spain). Anecdote, sure, but I got the impression a lot of businesses on Iceland hired various foreign workers (not to the exclusion of Icelanders, just to fill in a shortage of skilled workers - perceived or real). And then there's Norway, which participates via the EEC, but isn't an EU member. And the UK has made some noise about getting a similar deal.

cloakandswagger 10y ago

This assumption is the same mistake made by almost all supranational federalists. Europe is composed of different countries with vastly different languages, cultures and economic conditions. Just because they're technically "joined" together via treaties doesn't mean labor is going to naturally distribute throughout the union.

themartorana 10y ago
And yet they thought a shared currency would be no big deal.
- cloakandswagger 10y ago
  Don't get me started. Economists from around the world were adamant that the Euro was a terrible idea when it was founded. Binding dozens of wildly differing economies to one currency controlled by one central bank has always been a pipe dream, but it takes decades for it to start to unravel.
  - ZeroGravitas 10y ago
    The politicians knew a shared currency without sharing other aspects was a bad idea, but they gambled that as the problems became manifest, they would be solved by greater unity. Maybe that was stupid, but it's a different kind of stupid than not listening to the economists.
- mapt 10y ago
  No, this could totally have worked. Once the Euro was implemented, they had a choice: Either do what's necessary for real large-scale labor-market mobility (where migration becomes a typical part of life and a substantial part of every paycheck gets remitted back to one's family), and-or create a fiscal union where Spanish spending gets subsidized by German taxes for the sake of unity. They opened the door a bit to the former legally but didn't force the issue sufficiently to make the numbers work, nor did they let economies collapse in ways that cause large-scale migration (preferring to buoy them up with unsustainable debt). They did little towards the latter. This was inadequate, and caused a massive, entirely foreseeable debt crisis because the ability to print money for the use of a single national economy that desperately needs inflation, was lost. The thing that the Eurodollar politicians were trying to force the 2000's politicians to do, did not come to pass.