Bulgaria – 3,000 New Jobs

In the context of the scarce, but yet positive, tendencies of Bulgaria’s labor market recovery it seems the efforts of both the local government and European institutions put into creating more jobs and reducing unemployment аre now effective.

Apart from the undoubtedly important youth unemployment struggle and the increase of temporary employment as a result of several European and national programs, the government has recently approved a 10-billion leva budget to leading Bulgarian companies for employment stimulation. This subsidy from the national budget includes partial reinstatement of employers’ mandatory social and health insurance payments provided that the employee has reached at least 12 successive months working on the same position.

This scheme of budget business stimulation is realized in compliance with the Investments Encouragement Act and its related certificates. The project is to result in 3,000 new jobs and private business investments amounting to more than 66 billion leva in the next five years.

This example represents only one of the implemented measures in Bulgarian labor market recovery process. Social unrest and exacerbated labor conditions seem to have made politicians and businessmen pay much more attention to those problems and put much more effort into their successful resolution.

Along with all projects for employed and unemployed qualification upgrade, postgraduates and students work employment and so forth, there are certain expectations for unemployment decline. Beyond doubt, positive results in this regard have already been accomplished but more straight-forward efforts and more steady-course policy for the realization of stable trends are required. The objective is clear – unemployment drop below the 10 % barrier accompanied by labor market and business environment recovery.

Of course, the entire process seems only a perspective now, but there are evident reasons for optimism in this regard. It is actually such an approach that should lead to success in the above mentioned policies within the next few years.