By Liz Alderman from Oyonnax, France @ NYTimes.com, July 27

[....] Jobs are plentiful in Ain, a sprawling manufacturing region in eastern France known as “Plastics Valley.” But companies in this forested frontier across from Switzerland have slowed production because they cannot find enough workers for a production line that increasingly requires computer and digital know-how.

“It’s a brake on competitiveness,” said Georges Pernoud, the president of Groupe Pernoud, whose company makes injection molding for plastic parts for BMW and other automakers. He said he has turned away contracts worth nearly a million euros in the past two years because he couldn’t find skilled people here or anywhere in France who wanted a factory job.

France, like many countries in Europe, has a labor problem. But in a nation where thousands of people took to the streets in the Yellow Vest movement to protest income inequality and a lack of economic opportunity, there is a peculiar twist.

Despite an unemployment rate of over 8 percent — the highest in Europe after Italy, Spain and Greece — over a quarter of a million jobs are unfilled. Businesses can’t find people to work as plumbers, engineers, waiters, cooks. The list goes on.

Nowhere is the challenge as stark as in manufacturing, where nearly 40 percent of companies cite a dearth of manpower. In Ain, which specializes in making plastic goods and machinery parts, at least 18,000 jobs are on offer..

France needs a solution quickly. After recovering from a double-dip recession during the financial crisis, the economy is slowing again [....]