UK has half million job vacancies

Britain has more than half a million jobs that could be filled by citizens of new European Union member states, an internet job agency said yesterday.

"There are some 550,000 job vacancies in Britain alone," Gary Mullan, head of marketing and sales at Dublin-based employment agency Prosperity Recruitment Solutions, told a news conference at the launch of his firm's operations in Poland.

"We will bring companies to job seekers and job seekers to companies the easy, online way," he said.

Britain and Ireland have kept labour markets open to post-communist EU newcomers while most other Western European countries banned workers from the new states, fearing a flood of cheap labour.

The company said it expects up to 360,000 Poles, Czechs and Hungarians to seek jobs in Britain and Ireland each year.

It had launched Polish operations ahead of Hungarian or Czech activities to tap Poland's "job-migration tradition" and because Poles had gained a reputation as good workers, it said.