The number of employees increases, the number of job seekers increases

Social schemes, lack of labour skills, lack of investment and export are some of the factors the economy expert says have contributed to the increase in unemployment in Kosovo.

While the number of jobseekers totals up to 100,000, private businesses are constantly in need of specific profiles, but the latter are faced with a lack of quadro.

This phenomenon highlights the gap between job providers and those capable of work.

Labour and Social Management Minister Skender Recica says the problem of unemployment in the country is imminent. According to him, the high unemployment rate has forwarded the country for a long period, adding how the minister is committed to easing unemployment in the country.

He says they are co-operating with the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Trade and Industry, as well as other dictatorships to instruct young people from professional education.

“As the minister, under active labour market measures, an estimated 11,000 job seekers have been treated with employment mediation, more active labour market measures, with support in self-employment, professional skills. We've got about 11,000 job seekers we've trained and prepared for their employment... 26:31, we're trying to get the number of unemployed, or the number of people we have registered as job seekers to see other opportunities. It's not our interest to look at the site and the cadres that we've prepared to send abroad”, says Recica.

He is convinced that next year, the number of those who will be trained for temporary work in the European Union will increase. Those who, after the end of their term, return to the land.

And Kosovo's Oda of Afarism board chairman Skender Krasniqi has indicated that compared to last year, in 2018, Kosovo had over 150,000 jobs less than in 2017.

According to him, it shows that the country has not even exceeded last year's employment level and has an extreme margin with the region.

Even this year, however, youth opportunities are very small because in Kosovo there is no disproportion between demand and need. Kosovo institutions, Government and businesses in general are failing to get what they need in the market. Kosovo's government is continuing to create quadros that do not have a job market, but are only graduating and are being unemployed”, he has told Kosovas.

At this point, Krasniqi says they are at best committed to improving the current situation, through the education of kudros for the labour market.

“We are making an ongoing effort with the Government of Kosovo, for Kosovo institutions to educate Quadro for the Kosovo market, not only cadre for face and face, but for market needs. In private businesses, there is a constant need for workers, for frameworks of certain profiles, and there are shortages, while unemployment is extreme. According to statistics, unemployment is above 30 per cent, according to TM3 statistics, but virtually real unemployment is above 70 per cent. Because of 1.2 million working-age citizens, there are only 347 thousand employees, which is an extremely large difference. Of them, over 80 percent are women”, he explains.

While the chairman of the Kosovo Chamber of Economics (OEK), Berat Rukiqii says that because of social schemes, there is no budgetary focus on the private sector, which would affect export growth and therefore the creation of new jobs.

He says that working and informality conditions are also two other factors that affect unemployment rates.

I am a major critic of these social policies that Kosovo has. Not only as an individual, but also as a private sector representative because we have a huge social burden because of a good portion of the budget going for social schemes, which I believe is a barrier to reforming the labour market, even creating new opportunities for youth”, Rukiqi said.

Kosovo Preress has also tried to contact the American Oda of Kosovo to address the problem of unemployment in the country, but that has been impossible.

Otherwise, according to AKS data, the employment rate in the Workers Power Survey (AFP), for the third quarter (TM3) 2018 was 29.1 per cent.

The highest employment was among men (45.6 percent), while female employment was 12.6 percent. Women are employed, mainly in the education, trade and health care sectors, with 54.5 per cent of them, while males are mainly employed in the trade, construction and production sectors, with 44.1 per cent.

While according to data that AKS had published in the fourth quarter (TM4) of 2017, Kosovo had an unemployment rate of 28.7 per cent, which was exceeded by 2 per cent only until the third quarter of this year.