Bulgaria Faces Acute Labour Shortage in 2008 - Experts

Business | January 15, 2008, Tuesday // 00:00
Bulgaria: Bulgaria Faces Acute Labour Shortage in 2008 - Experts Bulgarian business will be finding it more and more difficult to recruit labour force, regardless of the qualification, representatives of JobTiger, leading Internet HR company, forecast. File photo by Yuliana Nikolova (Sofia Photo Agency)

Bulgaria is about to suffer from an acute shortage of labour in 2008, one year after its accession to the European Union, a leading local Internet HR company forecast.

Companies in Bulgaria will be finding it more and more difficult to recruit labour force, regardless of the qualification, representatives of JobTiger company announced at a press conference on Tuesday.

Thousands of workers, often those with the best qualifications in the sectors, will continue to emigrate to and from Europe, while companies in Bulgaria will have to come up with new HR tools to motivate their staff and offer them a 15% increase in wages on average.

Poor distribution of skills and low mobility inside the country will be the other trends to shape up the labour market in the country next year.

The chronic labour shortage will call for importing workers from countries outside the European Union and will open niches for pensioners and people who are just about to retire, the experts predicted.

They pointed out that the import of workers is a short-term solution to be applied mainly in the implementation of infrastructure projects, but in the longer term it may do more harm than good.

The experts from the company expect wages to hardly rise by more than 15% since Bulgaria is still lagging behind in labour productivity.

They declined to forecast how the flat tax rate, introduced at the beginning of this year, combined with higher levels of social insurance contributions will impact the local labour market.

Bulgaria's business is much more likely to reach out to the people in the education system next year in a bid to find new ways for cooperation.

The most acute problems in this area are lack of motivation among the young people, lack of practical skills and knowledge how to plan their career.

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