Ireland’s booming economy has hit near full employment, revealing critical talent gaps across sectors. In 2024, Ireland reached a record 74.4% employment rate, its highest ever. While this growth signals prosperity, it has also intensified competition for talent. According to ManpowerGroup, 81% of Irish employers struggled to find skilled talent in 2023 – the worst shortage on record With unemployment hovering at just 4.2% in late 2024, the pool of available workers is limited, giving jobseekers significant leverage.
The Scope of the Skills Gap
A range of industries in Ireland face acute labor shortages. Ireland’s National Skills Bulletin indicates persistent gaps in IT, engineering, healthcare, and construction roles.
A report noted that job postings for IT roles like helpdesk support are down 30% compared to pre-pandemic levels – suggesting hiring challenges rather than reduced demand. Hiring internationally has become essential: the Irish government issued a record 39,390 employment permits in 2024, a 27% jump from 2023, to attract global talent.
Economic Impact
The skills gap directly impacts business growth. In a full-employment economy, expanding companies often experience project delays, rising wage costs, and lost opportunities due to unfilled roles. National surveys show nearly 1 in 10 Irish businesses consider recruiting skilled employees their top challenge for the next quarter.
Ireland’s productivity could suffer if companies cannot secure the expertise needed for innovation. With Europe’s fastest-growing economy, even a shortfall of critical skills can slow R&D, stifle expansion, and hinder competitive advantage.
Outsourcing as a Solution
For Irish business leaders, outsourcing with Emapta presents a timely strategy to bridge the talent gap. Rather than compromising growth plans, companies can tap into global talent pools where skilled professionals are abundant. By leveraging Emapta’s network, Irish firms gain access to specialized skills in IT, finance, engineering, and more – skills that might be scarce or expensive locally. This approach overcomes geographic constraints, providing a scalable pipeline of qualified candidates ready to support business needs.
Benefits of Outsourcing with Emapta:
Cost Efficiency
Outsourcing can reduce staffing costs by 70% compared to local hires. Emapta’s pricing model offers transparency and zero salary markups, ensuring you pay for talent – not overhead. Savings on salaries and benefits mean companies can reinvest in growth and innovation.
Scalability and Flexibility
Need to ramp up a team quickly for a project or new market launch? Outsourcing enables rapid scaling without long-term commitments. Emapta’s flexible contracts let you adjust team size as business demands change, providing agility during expansion or seasonal peaks.
Access to Specialized Skills
Ireland’s shortage in areas like software development, data analytics, and healthcare can be offset by Emapta’s global talent pool. With 20 offices worldwide and recruitment hubs in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Latin America, Emapta identifies experts with the precise skills you need – including those emerging skills crucial for digital transformation.
Quality & Control
Unlike traditional outsourcing, Emapta’s model gives you full control over your offshore team. Your remote staff mirrors your in-house processes, tools, and culture. Emapta handles HR, compliance, and IT support, but you set priorities and standards, ensuring quality output and seamless integration with your local operations.
Discover how a global talent strategy
can address the skills gap in Ireland.
Emapta: Your Global Outsourcing Partner
Emapta has a strong track record serving 900+ clients across 30+ countries including Ireland and the UK. Irish businesses trust Emapta for secure, compliant, and tailored staffing solutions. Whether you need a single financial analyst or an entire R&D unit, Emapta recruits to your specifications. Data security and GDPR compliance are built into the process, crucial for European operations. With 15+ years of experience, we’ve refined onboarding and management practices to ensure remote teams deliver equal or greater productivity than onshore teams.
CASE STUDY
Irish Startup Scales Through Outsourcing
2GoCup, a Dublin-based startup in the Sustainability industry, wanted to scale its reach and was facing difficulty hiring an outbound sales team amid fierce local competition. By partnering with Emapta, 2GoCup built a nearshore team of Macedonian outbound sales agents within six weeks. The time zone alignment (only one hour ahead of Ireland) and strong English proficiency in North Macedonia enabled real-time collaboration. The offshore team delivered valuable sales leads within three weeks of its setup, exceeding initial projections and achieving an early ROI. Meanwhile, they saved an estimated 50% on labor costs, which they redirected to product development and customer service. This hybrid team strategy helped 2GoCup overcome local hiring roadblocks, achieving a successful launch and subsequent growth.
Nearshoring via Emapta’s Macedonia Office
For Irish companies, Emapta’s Macedonia hub offers a compelling nearshore option. Often called the “Philippines of Europe,” North Macedonia provides highly skilled, English-speaking talent at 40–60% lower costs than Western Europe. The cultural fit and European time zone mean Macedonian staff work Ireland’s business hours, ensuring smooth communication. With many Macedonian professionals holding advanced degrees in IT, engineering, and finance, this nearshoring route combines proximity and quality. Emapta, ranked the #1 BPO in North Macedonia, manages all local logistics, from state-of-the-art offices to labor law compliance. Irish businesses get the best of both worlds: an extended local team just a short flight (or Zoom call) away, integrated into their workflows.
Overcoming Workforce Limitations
By embracing offshoring or nearshoring, Irish companies can transcend domestic workforce constraints. Instead of vying for the same limited pool of local experts, outsourcing opens a worldwide reservoir of talent. This not only fills immediate vacancies but also infuses new perspectives and innovations into the business. For example, an Irish healthcare provider short on nurses can offshore telehealth nurses from the Philippines to support patient care, mitigating local staff shortages without compromising service quality. An Irish fintech firm struggling to hire cybersecurity analysts can tap Emapta’s Sri Lanka or Malaysia talent hubs, where cybersecurity skills are plentiful. The result is a sustainable talent strategy that future-proofs the organization against local demographic shifts or education gaps.
A Future-Ready Workforce Strategy
Ireland’s skills shortage is a hurdle, but not an insurmountable one. Progressive business leaders are turning to outsourcing partners like Emapta to bridge the gap – accessing global expertise, reining in costs, and staying agile in a tight labor market. This approach isn’t about offloading jobs; it’s about augmenting and empowering your local team with global colleagues so your business can continue to innovate and grow. With Emapta’s support – from its Irish-responsive nearshore teams in Macedonia to its offshore specialists worldwide – Irish companies can thrive despite the skills crunch, building resilient teams that are diverse, skilled, and future-ready.
Emapta is a trailblazer in the outsourcing industry, redefining traditional outsourcing by creating a new standard for how businesses leverage offshore and nearshore teams. With a focus on providing dedicated teams from the world’s most skilled talent hubs, Emapta goes beyond cost reduction to deliver true value, optimizing operational efficiency and resource management for its clients.
Operating in over 30 countries, Emapta celebrates 15 years of consistent growth, supporting over 900 clients with a global workforce of more than 10,000 team members. The company’s commitment to employee welfare has earned it recognition as one of the “Best Companies to Work For in Asia” and contributes to one of the lowest attrition rates in the industry.
Emapta’s innovative staffing solutions are tailored to meet the evolving needs of its clients, ensuring each partnership is productive, sustainable, and forward-thinking. By continuously adapting to market demands, Emapta remains at the forefront of outsourcing, setting the stage for the future of work.
