site.bta50%-Plus of People Activated with Employment Agency's Assistance Find Place on Labor Market - Agency Head

A total of 56.1% of all persons activated with the assistance of Bulgaria’s Employment Agency (EA) find a place on the labour market, the head of the Agency, Smilen Valov, said at the beginning of an EA-hosted conference on "Successful Activation Strategies: Present and Future," which took place here on Wednesday.

Activation is one of the ways to tackle labour shortages. This untapped labour potential can fill a lot of the vacancies on the labour market, Valov noted, adding that it is risky to leave inactive persons, especially the youth who neither work nor study, without state support.

People who are not registered with the job office are considered inactive, caretaker Deputy Minister of Labour and Social Policy Natalia Efremova said, adding that their number exceeds 1 million. She noted that there are various factors contributing to labor market exclusion, including a lack of education and health problems. Lack of work habits is also reported as a problem by specialists, Efremova added. In her words, the Employment Agency's employees put in effort to ensure that inactive people have motivation to work and receive support from the institutions.

Employment Agency Executive Director Gabriela Goranova-Dimcheva said that there were 44,212 persons activated with the Agency's assistance in 2023, adding that their number in 2024 currently stands at 20,483. She highlighted the work done by Roma and youth mediators, activation specialists, and labour mediators.

Bulgaria's labour market has fully recovered from the COVID-19 pandemic. Unemployment hit a record low in 2022, said Vasil Zhivkov, programme manager in the Bulgaria and Romania unit at the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs, and Inclusion. The employment figures are better than the EU average: at 76.2%, it is getting closer to the national target of 79% for 2030, the expert noted.