800 vacancies in Flemish chemical and pharma sector
With 2,500 staff taken on last year, the region’s pharmaceutical and chemical sector is still looking for hundreds of new employees
Education requirements stricter
More than half of the vacancies do not require specific experience in the sector, though companies do have increasingly higher demands concerning levels of education.
The companies questioned provide about two-thirds of the employment in the Flemish chemical and pharmaceutical sector. The study showed that 82% of them are currently hiring. Half of these are new jobs.
About one-third of the job offers ask for master’s level education, including work available for industrial and civil engineers. Bio-engineers and pharmaceutical researchers also make up a significant number of the vacancies.
A further 27% require bachelor’s degrees, mainly for technical functions in production and maintenance. The number of jobs available for staff with a secondary education diploma in technical education (TSO) has fallen from 41% last year to 29% in the first half of this year.
“It is crucial to maintain the quality of our education system,” Frank Beckx, managing director of Essenscia Vlaanderen, told Trends. “We hope that even more youngsters choose scientific or technical studies.”
The chemical and pharmaceutical sector provides 60,200 direct jobs and some 100,000 indirect jobs in Flanders.
