By Jennifer Matthys - Unemployment in the UK is still soaring, but that doesn’t stop British bosses offering thousands of jobs to Romanian workers over British ones.

The number of British unemployed has now reached a 17 year high of 2.68 million.

And yet, despite this, 2,785 vacancies, including roles for nurses, engineers, chefs and other skilled workers, are being advertised by an online recruitment agency in Bucharest, Romania.

The firm says that British companies are trying to fill these jobs with Romanian workers.

Earlier this month, UK unemployment hit 8.4%, the highest level since 1994. And now official figures show that nine out of ten jobs created in 2010 went to foreign nationals.

Phil McCabe, of the Forum of Private Business, said “If there are British workers that are ready, willing and skilled enough to do these jobs then it is absolutely right that those jobs should be offered first to British workers.

“However from talking to our members, we have found that there is a shortage of skilled workers from the UK, and many people have basic skills lacking such as numeracy and literacy.

“In addition young people’s attitudes are sometimes found to be lacking, so advertising in Romania possibly reflects this situation.”

In the South West, there are currently 176,000 unemployed people living there, and yet a whole host of taxi driving jobs in the region are currently being advertised in Romania.

Meanwhile, in the South East, there are 276,000 jobless people, yet supposedly many hotel worker jobs are available here and advertised in Romania.

Anglia = England.