Bulgaria has a substantial reserve on the labour market of over 200,000 people of working age who are inactive.

Prompting these people to be active and seeking employment opportunities for people with disabilities is a priority of the national employment action plan for next year, Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Policy Lazar Lazarov told reporters.

He inaugurated a conference for making public the results of the assessment of the effect of the policy applied on the labour market. The 200,000 people in question are not registered at any labour office, frequently they neither work nor study, nor are they enrolled in any additional qualification training courses. Using mediators the state will endeavour to find them and will then offer them the existing services of the National Employment agency. New services are being looked into and will also be made available. All services are free of charge, Deputy Minister Lazarov said, reported by BNR 

Among the inactive there is a contingent of people with secondary vocational education, which, together with small additional courses, depending on the development in the region, can be provided with a quick realization. Some people also rely on funds that come from their loved ones working outside the country. Others have property they manage effectively. There are also those who probably work without an employment contract. The harms of undeclared employment are explained in campaigns by the General Labor Inspectorate, in conjunction with other state institutions.

The National Employment Action Plan for 2020 will focus on improving the chances and opportunities of the workforce to meet the challenges of the labor market and the demand of employers by enhancing demand-side training opportunities. Therefore, forecasts made at the regional level for needs will also help.

The funds in the National Employment Plan will be channeled in combination to qualification and subsidized employment programs. Those programs that have a good effect will continue, most of them also related to people in pre-retirement age, long-term unemployed and young people up to the age of 29.

In the next programming period, the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs will have almost double its resources in the field of labor market measures and policies. They will complement national measures, Lazar Lazarov said.

More than 62 percent of participants in state-funded employment and training programs and measures have subsequently started work or business, Lazarov said.

The main results of the second study carried out on the ex-post evaluation of the impact of active labor market policy at the individual level, evaluating the programs and measures included in the National Employment Action Plan in 2017. successful in the labor market were just under 60%. Unemployed persons who participated in programs and measures were approximately twice as likely to find a job compared to unemployed who were not included in programs and measures.

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