Bizkaia brings together the main institutional, business and educational agents to implement its Commitment to Talent

• The Provincial Council of Bizkaia reaffirms its commitment to talent by pledging a 10 million euro investment.
• The Deputy General, Unai Rementeria, held a meeting with the agents that form part of the working group created for the purpose of reducing the existing gap between the STEM skills demanded by companies and the supply of qualified people available in the region.
• The three Basque universities, the vocational training centre associations, the energy, motor vehicle, bioscience and health clusters and those of the knowledge and applied technology industry, the main business associations, companies driving the Bizkaia economy and BBK are all part of this working group, which is open to new members, and which has drawn up a list of commitments, undertaken by all of them, in order to move forward with this objective.

The Deputy General, Unai Rementeria, held a meeting with representatives from the working group promoted by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia in order to work on the generation, attraction and development of talent in Bizkaia with the aim of reducing the existing gap between the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) skills demanded by companies and the supply of qualified people available in the region. Within the framework of this meeting, the list of commitments adopted by all the participating agents in order to move forward with this objective was submitted, which includes a regional investment of 10 million euros over the next five years for implementing actions combined with contributions from other public and private collaborators.

Reducing the gap between the demand for STEM skill profiles and the supply of qualified people in this area is crucial for making progress in the technological-digital, ecological-environmental and socio-health transitions, which are the main challenges at present and which determine the competitiveness of our business fabric and the social well-being of the region. It is for this reason that a working group has been set up in recent months with the aim of developing initiatives in a coordinated manner, both on an individual and collective basis. The Bilbao City Council and Bilbao Ekintza, the three Basque universities, UPV/EHU, the University of Deusto and Mondragon Unibertsitatea, the associations of vocational training centres, Hetel and Ikaslan, Novia Salcedo Foundation, the energy and motor industry clusters, ACICAE, the bioscience and health cluster, Basque Health Cluster, and the knowledge industry and applied technology clusters, Gaia, Cebek, Confekoop. Asle, FVEM, Petronor, Iberdrola, Gestamp, CIE, Arteche, Velatia. Mondragon Talent, Telefónica and BBK are all part of this group, which is open to new members.

As part of this joint and coordinated work, the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, companies, entities and educational institutions have drawn up a series of commitments which they have adopted in order to achieve the established objective. These include an investment by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia of ten million over the next five years, as well as improved tax benefits to attract talent and grants to attract specialist profiles to companies. The various working groups that have been set up to develop the decalogue of commitments have identified possible projects that will be firmed-up in the coming weeks and that have to do with developing, retaining and attracting STEM talent.

The work being carried out in this working group will help to define transformational projects that will address the problem between the demand and supply of qualified personnel, a concern shared by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia, the Bilbao City Council and the Basque Government. In addition to this concern, the three institutions have also shared specific lines of work and are working in a coordinated manner, taking into account the progress made in the working group for establishing these transformative projects.

Supply of and demand for STEM profiles
STEM profiles are in great demand by companies, as shown by the prediction that two out of every three university graduates that companies will hire will come from branches linked to these areas (more than 10,300 people) or the fact that three occupations in the STEM area were among the five occupations with the greatest share of job opportunities in 2021. However, student interest in these disciplines is not growing, which is making it difficult for companies to find these types of profiles: 63% of companies have difficulty finding people trained in the digital environment and 78%, in the case of engineering. This deficit is accentuated in strategic sectors such as energy, sustainable mobility, the silver economy and Fintech.

In fact, some of the main threats and weaknesses to employment prospects in activities and sectors considered to be strategic are the lack of qualified or specialised professionals and the employment conditions. In fact, 21.5% of companies with less than ten employees indicate that one of the difficulties they have in undertaking innovative activities is the lack of qualified personnel within the company, a percentage that rises to 40.6% in the case of companies with more than ten employees.