GAP: 28% of citizens over 18 plan to emigrate in the first part of 2024

The GAP Institute has published the report “Parenting to emigrate from Kosovo after visa liberalisation: the impact on the workforce”, through which it has analysed how the migration of Kosovo's citizens is expected to affect the labour market.

According to GAP, from Kosovo between 2012 and 2022, over 338 thousand citizens emigrated, where in 2022 alone, 41 thousand and 553 citizens left the country, where the active workforce has been reduced to 21 thousand and 571 people, while inactive for 14 thousand and 698 people.

“In case we don't have an activism of the non-active workforce, which is quite high, actually replacing the labour force missing from foreign immigrants is insufficient. In 2022, 2,979 foreign nationals who have emigrated to Kosovo for employment reasons have replaced less than 14% of the active workforce that were no longer part of the labour market”.

The results of the survey conducted by the GAP Institute in December 2023, regarding plans and the tendency of Kosovo citizens to emigrate after visa liberalisation, show that 28% of Kosovo's citizens over 18 plan to emigrate in the first part of 2024. The under-24 age group represents the most likely category (33.4%) to emigrate”, the GAP report said.

Furthermore, it becomes known that the sectors expected to be affected to a greater extent by the departure of workers in the short and medium-term term are the construction sector of 18.7 percent, hotel and gastronomy at the same percentage, the trade sector at 18.1 percent, and the 12.9 percent production sector.

The same “are among the sectors with the highest number of employees and where employee productivity is high, but where wages continue to remain low. Pay increases compared to other sectors are expected in these sectors. In 2023 it is noted that there was a salary change in Kosovo's labour market, where about 27.4% of the employees surveyed reported salary increases”.

“About 45% of respondents, in 2023, were employed with regular jobs (39.3% employed in the private sector and 5.8% in the public sector). Economic reasons prove to be prevalent in making the decision to emigrate. More than 20% of people planning to emigrate have realised to invest in the last month of 301-450 euros, meanwhile, 32.9% have failed to realise revenues at all. Most of the citizens planning to emigrate are persons who have only secondary schooling (57.7%)”, the report says.

GAP said the main destinations of citizens who plan to emigrate are Germany at 71.4 percent, followed by Switzerland by 11.7 percent and Austria by 5.3 percent.