During the “first peak of the first wave” of the corona crisis, estimates of the impact of the coronavirus on the global economy were bleak. Some sectors, such as catering, immediately felt the negative consequences, as a result of which employees were fired or sent on forced leave.
Some production branches and the most important exporters of Serbia suspended production until the fall or shut down blast furnaces until the general condition improved. On the other hand, the authorities and official domestic statistics indicate that the number of employees has not only not decreased, but has also increased compared to last year.
The Republic Bureau of Statistics recently announced that the total employment in the second quarter reached about 2.2 million workers, ie that the registered employment was higher by 35,532 people compared to the same quarter last year.
It should be noted that we are talking here only about “registered employment”, which does not cover undeclared workers, and who are actually at the highest risk of losing their jobs during the Covid crisis.
The reason for that is precisely that they were not the subject of the first package of support of the Government of Serbia for mitigating the economic consequences of COVID-19, which was paid from April to June, ie during the second quarter.
Last month, the president of the UGS “Nezavisnost” union, Zoran Stojiljkovic, estimated that the number of unemployed in Serbia would be around one million in the fall, ie that it would almost double in relation to the number of 550,000 unemployed before the crisis.
“Take a third of those who have returned from Western Europe, and add that up with the expectation that about ten percent of employees will lose their jobs. Add to that the number of 850 to 900 thousand and those who are not registered, so this statement (out of a million unemployed) is verifiable,” said Stojiljkovic.
The Fiscal Council does not share the pessimistic estimates of the unions, according to which hundreds of thousands of workers would lose their jobs.
“Accurate forecasts of the number of workers who will lose their jobs are still impossible, but for now we expect that a reduction in GDP of about 3 percent could lead to a moderate drop in employment from one to one and a half percent, which means that during the crisis 30,000 to 50,000 employees could lose their jobs,” said the chief economist of the Fiscal Council, Danko Brcerevic, Nova Ekonomija reports.
