Between 50,000 and 70,000 foreign workers may enter Bulgaria by the end of 2025 if the current pace of labor import continues. This estimate was presented by Social Minister Borislav Gutsanov during a session of the parliamentary committee on labor and social policy. According to him, the country has already seen as many workers from third countries arrive in the first four months of the year as it did in all of 2024.

Gutsanov pointed out that tourism currently draws the largest share of these foreign workers. “You can see that a large part of the staff in hotels and restaurants is now coming from third countries,” he noted. Agriculture and the food processing sector, especially the canning industry, are also experiencing a rise in foreign labor demand. The minister underlined that businesses across sectors repeatedly warn about staff shortages.

At the same time, the country faces a paradox: around 200,000 young Bulgarians neither study nor work. Gutsanov said the government is now working to understand this gap. “We proposed and the Council of Ministers approved the idea that various institutions must carry out a very precise analysis - to the level of the individual - because clearly something is off. We cannot bring in 50,000 people from abroad and, at the same time, have 200,000 young people idle. These are two trends that simply don’t align,” he commented.