Third of job agency vacancies require Luxembourgish
More than a third of all job adverts posted by the country’s unemployment agency require applicants to speak Luxembourgish, Labour Minister Dan Kersch said on Wednesday.
Other language skills, in particular French, are important for people looking for a job in the country, the minister added, in response to a parliamentary question.
In the first half of this year jobs agency Adem posted 20,000 job vacancies across all sectors, with knowledge of Luxembourgish a mandatory requirement for 35% of posts advertised, a figure which has remained largely unchanged for the past six years.
The number of jobs where the language is a prerequisite varies across sectors. It is required in 96% of adverts for creche assistants and social workers while only 16% of banking jobs and 17% of legal roles asked for Luxembourgish language skills.
Adem has handed out 7,000 language vouchers in the past three years to job seekers wishing to take Luxembourgish lessons, the minister added.
A study carried out in 2019 by Luxembourg’s official statistics agency, Statec, showed that Luxembourgish is the most common language spoken at home in the country but that French is the dominant language at work.
The National Language Centre (INL) is now developing an online platform to enable people from all over the world to learn Luxembourgish free of charge, Education Minister Claude Meisch said last month.
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