There are not that many young people entering the job market on a regular basis, warns Céline Abecassis-Moedas.
When a boss thinks about hire, It’s almost automatic to think about the new worker’s age. The majority of employers in Portugal continue to think of the most young people; but this will not be viable forever.
Céline Abecassis-Moedas, vice-rector of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Universidade Católica Portuguesa, believes that something will have to change in companies. In fact, it is already changing – but in few companies.
It’s just that already There aren’t that many young people entering the world of work: “The labor market was and continues to be organized based on the idea that we have many young people entering the job market on a regular basis. Now, today these young people no longer exist [com essa expressão]but it is a trend that few companies have already included in their way of thinking”.
In an interview with , Abecassis-Moedas highlights the pyramidal model that predominates in companies in Portugal: “Based on the idea that many young people enter every year. It made sense at the time when the population had a pyramidal age distribution. This is no longer the case.”
And there’s the other question: what about older workers? “Companies continue with this model of trying to recruit a lot of young people, but there are fewer and fewer young people, and companies don’t really know what to do with older people. The model today will probably have to be reinvented. Companies are not well prepared to welcome older talent.”
The head of Católica warns that “no one is looking at demographicsbecause it seems like something very distant, when it is a background trend”.
Even so, the dean considers that companies in Portugal are “starting to wake up” to this trend. And the reason is easy to find: they are not finding the young people they want to recruit.
In a company with several people over 50 years old, firing them or putting them on pre-retirement is not the solution: “Because there are no young people to replace those who go into retirement or pre-retirement”.
“I think companies are waking up a little bit now. What can we do? I’m a teacher, so I’m probably biased, but it’s form, form, form. The first step is for everyone to become aware that this is a fundamental trend, which will not change”, analyzed Céline Abecassis-Moedas.
