The woodworking and furniture sector is a consolidated industry in Europe, with +300.000 businesses and +2 M people employed (DG Growth). The sector is almost made up of MSMEs (<10 employees) with relatively few large firms, these facts justifying the necessity to run cooperative actions across Europe if MS (micro and small enterprises) want to be effective and successfully keep up with competition (especially from China and US), facing sector-specific challenges.

The labour-intensive nature of the woodworking and furniture industry clashes with an ageing workforce and the difficulties in hiring and recruiting qualified young people not attracted by what they consider a traditional manufacturing sector. The industry is in the top-20 sectors suffering from bottleneck problems due to the lack of applicants with adequate skills and lack of willingness to take jobs (Mapping and Analysing Bottleneck Vacancies in EU Labour Markets, EC Report, 2014). From 2005 to 2014, the number of 25-39 aged employees has been declining by -7% (from 45% to 38%), whereas people +55yrs are increasing by +6% (from 9% to 15%).

Furthermore, in Europe there are recorded +2M unfilled vacancies, including in the woodworking and furniture sector, despite it being estimated that +14% of people aged 15 to 24, and +18% in the age group 25 to 29 (Eurostat, 2019) are unemployed.