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ZURICH (Reuters) - Adecco Group Chief Executive Alain Dehaze expects ongoing problems in the automotive sector to dampen demand for temporary workers in Germany while the staffing company is struggling to find enough qualified staff in the United States.

Germany continues to be a hit by an economic slowdown and lower car sales due to the introduction of new emissions standards, Adecco said on Tuesday, as it reported a 2 percent fall in first-quarter revenue.

“The new law on emissions... has created a bottleneck and is slowing down seriously the sales of new cars in Germany,” Dehaze said. “Around 30 percent of our revenues come from the automotive industry; this had an impact in the previous quarter and continued to have an impact in this quarter.”

Adecco said it had problems finding enough qualified professional staff -- particularly IT workers -- in the United States, where unemployment has hit its lowest level in nearly 50 years.

Some companies had started offshoring workers, while there was also a lack of workers with required skills.

“There is candidate scarcity,” Chief Financial Officer Hans Ploos van Amstel told reporters. “Labor and technology need to keep up with each other.”