CEU economist joins €12.7M ERC grant on European labor shortages

Andrea Weber, an economics professor at Central European University, is part of a four-university team awarded a six-year European Research Council Synergy Grant to study why labor shortages and underemployment coexist across Europe. The project aims to clarify labor-market mismatches and whether mobility across regions and borders can help ease them.

Why it matters: - Europe is facing labor shortages at the same time that many workers remain unemployed or underused. - The imbalance can hit productivity, wages, inequality and the delivery of essential public services. - The project could inform policy on skills matching and worker mobility in Austria, Central and Eastern Europe and beyond.

What happened: - Andrea Weber, professor of economics at Central European University, is one of four lead economists awarded a €12.7 million European Research Council Synergy Grant. - The six-year project is titled “Labor Shortages: Measurement, Mismatch, and Mobility” and is also called LabShort. - The team spans CEU, the Institute for Fiscal Studies in London, University College London and the NHH Norwegian School of Economics. - The project is led by Richard Blundell, with Fabien Postel Vinay, Andrea Weber and Kjell Salvanes as co-leads.

The details: - LabShort will study why labor shortages and underemployment coexist across Europe. - The researchers will examine how workers’ skills can be better matched to employers’ needs. - The project will test whether regional and cross-border mobility can reduce labor-market imbalances. - The team will develop new measures of skill and geographic mismatch in labor markets. - The research will use cross-country data linkages, new surveys and economic theory. - Senior contributors include Monica Costa-Dias, Attila Lindner, Miklos Koren, Katrine Loeken and Alexander Willen. - Researchers from the Institut des Politiques Publiques in France and the e61 Institute in Australia are also part of the effort. - European labor markets are under pressure from ageing populations, shrinking workforces and changing skill demand. - Technological change, including artificial intelligence, could intensify those pressures. - Andrea Weber said the project is especially relevant for Austria and Central and Eastern Europe, where cross-border mobility plays an important role.

Between the lines: - The grant signals that labor shortages are now being treated as a structural European economic problem, not just a temporary hiring issue. - The inclusion of mobility in the research agenda suggests policymakers are looking beyond training alone and toward how workers move across sectors and borders. - The project also reflects growing concern that skill mismatches may be limiting the gains from technology rather than boosting productivity automatically.

What's next: - The LabShort team will build new datasets and surveys and use them to analyze labor-market mismatches across countries. - The researchers are expected to produce evidence on how employers and workers shape job search, hiring and skill formation. - Findings may help shape labor-market policy in Europe over the next six years.

The bottom line: - CEU’s Andrea Weber is helping lead a major EU-backed effort to explain one of Europe’s toughest labor-market puzzles and test what could ease it.