A difficult picture of present and future coach and bus driver shortages has been painted by the International Road Transport Union (IRU) in its Driver Shortage Report 2023 Passenger – Europe publication.
Research was carried out in Q1 and so the position on actual shortages may have changed since. However, IRU found that in European nations captured by the work, 105,000 coach and bus driver positions – or 10% of the total – were unfilled, and that the shortage had increased by 54% over the prior year.
Worryingly, the report highlights that shortages mean 75% of operators cannot grow to meet customer demand, and that 48% are facing “declining productivity.” It also notes that diversity remains an issue, with 16% of drivers being female compared to 46% of the working population in Europe.
Less than 3% of drivers are under 25, the report says. That finding has seen IRU again underline the difficulty in access to the profession that is created by limitations placed on the youngest PCV drivers. In the UK, that includes them being held to regular services within a 50km radius when under 20, a restriction that is a growing target for change.
“The ‘school-to-wheel’ gap is a key barrier to attracting new drivers,” IRU notes. It has called for “structural change” in how young drivers are recruited and for the issue of staff shortages in the sector to be considered at both national and EU levels.
In the UK, that comes against a background of repeated cases made by the Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT) for coach and bus drivers to be added to the Shortage Occupations List. Such a route would allow them to be recruited from abroad via the skilled worker visa route, but such an approach is gaining little traction.
In a slightly brighter note for UK coach and bus operators, the scale of driver shortage here – at an overall 9%, according to IRU – is significantly lower than in some other European nations. The Netherlands is at 20% and Austria at 16%; Spain is at 14%, and Italy 11%. IRU has used data collated by CPT for its UK figures.
When factors including an increased requirement for drivers and a projection of significant retirements over coming years, IRU believes that the Europe-wide shortage could worsen significantly by 2028.
Its figures suggest that 24% of positions could be unfilled by then, even with an assumption that the rate of recruitment and driver productivity remain constant. The IRU driver shortage report in executive summary form can be downloaded here.
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