The unemployment rate in Serbia in the period from April to June this year was 11.1 percent, the same as it was in the second quarter of 2019, when there was no crisis with the pandemic.
Compared to the first quarter, according to the latest SBS data, unemployment was 1.7 percent lower in the months from April to June, and there were fewer unemployed in all regions – in Vojvodina, that percentage dropped from 10.9 percent to 9.6 percent, in Belgrade from 9.6 to nine percent, in Sumadija and Western Serbia from 14.7 to 13.6 percent, in Southern and Eastern Serbia from 16.8 percent to 12.1 percent.
Compared to the same quarter last year, when the closure was in full swing due to the coronavirus pandemic, the number of unemployed this year increased by 51.3 percent (from 232,000 to 352,000).
In the population of young people aged 15 to 24, in the second quarter of 2021, compared to the same period last year, the number of those outside the labor force decreased by 78,000, with 52,000 of them finding employment, while the unemployed “switched” almost 16,000 young people.
All comparisons with last year, especially in these months when the complete closure was in force, do not give the right picture. At that time, unemployment was 7.9 percent in that period, understandably “spoiled” from the beginning of the year, but up to the level at which Serbia was in this field two years ago.
Economist Sasa Djogovic says that this is the result of an increase in employment in the construction sector, because as investments in infrastructure projects grow, so does the number of labor.
“Besides that, we also have the white powder syndrome, that is, housing construction is growing, so the need for labor in construction is increased, which we must also import. The layoffs occurred in some other service activities and that was compensated in this sector, while the processing industry certainly has growth,” explains Djogovic.
The big problem is the lack of manpower
Compared to 2019, he points out, we have the growth of industrial production, but also retail turnover, exports are higher, GDP is higher and the unemployment rate is in line with 2019, which means that we have not entered the crisis.
“There have been certain weaknesses in some sectors, but in general, industry is growing, construction in particular, agriculture as well. It is logical that the result is weaker, but this indicates that some segments have managed to absorb the growth of unemployment in some other sectors,” our interlocutor notes.
Djogovic says that some sectors in services failed due to the pandemic, while others had an increased need for labor, which we do not have enough, which all in some way led to the result of this not being worse than in 2019.
He says that the big problem is the lack of labor and that it is especially felt in construction, but also in transport, especially medicine, which was a problem before and which the pandemic completely revealed.
For unions, these data do not say much because workers in practice, like those from Geox recently, have felt what it means to lose their jobs. The vice-president of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Serbia, Zoran Mihajlovic, says that unemployment was somewhat mitigated by the intervention of the state, but that it was absolutely not enough, especially in the sectors where the decline was noticeable.
“Last year, almost 60,000 people lost their jobs in Serbia, in the catering and tourism sectors. I don’t think that situation could be fixed in such a short time. In most of those sectors, workers in the gray zone are employed, so it does not seem statistically that unemployment is that high, but it will be felt,” Mihajlovic points out.
Labor shortages in both Germany and the Scandinavian countries
As he says, a number of young people will leave the country as the borders open, because there is a great shortage of labor in both Germany and the Scandinavian countries.
“Unfortunately, if they leave, we will not have the problem of unemployment, but the problem of the outflow of labor,” Mihajlovic notes.
He says that he is not sure what will happen next year, but he expects that, if the pandemic continues, the Crisis Staff will have to take restrictive measures at some point, which will again have its consequences.
“You saw what happened to Geox, Jura announces that it is reducing the number of workers, because the market, especially cars, has died down. Our economy, foreign investors are mostly tied to the car industry and the crisis will affect them the most. It is being held now because the state is intervening, subsidizing salaries, but that will last until the end of the year, and next year the state will continue to subsidize or they will reduce the number of workers, which will lead to higher unemployment or people leaving Serbia,” Mihajlovic said and that there is no magic wand and that companies will either work or lay off workers in the absence of work, and that those workers without work will probably go for some other job, but not in our country.
Zoran Vujovic, the president of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises, says that he is afraid that we will not have workers in a few years.
“Everything that is being built at the moment is a withdrawn construction operation, the craft part is endangered, there is no one to work. In Western Europe, there used to be obstacles for our people to get a job, now it is less and less, they would rather receive someone from the Balkans than from Asia,” Vujovic points out and notes that a few years ago there were 750,000 unemployed, and that it decreased the most because people are gone.
2.8 million employees
In the second quarter of this year, 2.8 million people were employed in Serbia, 352,000 were unemployed, and 2.7 million people over the age of 15 were out of the labor force, according to data from the Republic Bureau of Statistics.
Such year-on-year trends related to the increase in unemployment at the expense of the reduction of the population outside the labor force, are, as they point out in the SBS, a consequence of the changes caused by the crisis due to the pandemic.
“In the second quarter of 2020, individuals who could not look for work or were unable to start work due to measures to prevent the spread of the virus, according to ILO definitions, were not considered unemployed, but were classified as out of the labor force,” they explain in the SBS, the unemployment rate increased from 7.9 percent in the second quarter of 2020 to 11.1 percent in the second quarter of this year. The largest number of employees in the second quarter worked in the service sector (55.2 percent), in industry (23.6 percent) and agriculture (15.3 percent), and the smallest in construction (5.9 percent), BiF reports.
