The food and tobacco industries
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NACE 2002 - 15 Manufacture of food products and beverages
NACE 2002 - 16 Manufacture of tobacco products
The future of the food industry will be influenced by the “gradual drying out of the pool of available workforce” in the Czech Republic. In the context of the anticipated shortage of workers companies will compete more fiercly for job candidates. At the same time, there will be a continuing decrease in the number of students interested in employment in industries that are viewed as less promising. The manufacture of food and beverages si one of such industries.
As with other industries, the situation in the food industry will be affected by the consequences of the economic crisis. Although it is unlikely that the crisis will have an impact on the overall level of food consumption, it will have a short-term impact on the structure of purchases – the proportion of cheaper foodstuffs will rise temporarily. Decreasing revenues will force companies, particularly manufacturers of comestibles, to implement austerity measures that will aim at increasing productivity and saving labour costs. In the long term, there will be other factors influencing the development in the industry. The expected population decline, on the one hand, may reduce the absolute level of food consumption. On the other hand, rising living standards will lead to increased consumer requirements in terms of quality. Thanks to the growing technological standards labour productivity will also grow. Qualification requirements will increase, but the absolute number of workers will decline further to as low as 20.4% in 2006-2020. Chances of finding employment will lessen more quickly for lower-skilled workers. Conversely, new trends will result in growing requirements for expertise and demand for specialists will also increase. This concerns particularly the operation and maintenance of modern manufacturing facilities, a more extensive penetration of ICT into manufacturing processes, the need to understand legislative changes, the capacity to draw on resources from grant schemes in an effective manner and, last but not least, the need to meet new and increasing requirments for quality and process management.
