Unemployment in Bulgaria was down during the second trimester of the year to its lowest level since 2010 and it currently stands at about 10%, figures from the National Statistical Institute suggest. The number of employed Bulgarians comes to more than 3 million. Despite the positive trend of growing employment from April to July, the bad news is that its growth rate has slowed down.

„31 thousand jobs have been created on an annual basis, according to latest data from NSI for the second trimester of 2015”, comments Yavor Alexiev from the Institute for Market Economics. „In the last trimester of 2014 as well as at the beginning of 2015 the economy created from 50,000 to 60,000 jobs on annual basis. For the first time we have seen a downward trend for a second trimester in a row with newly created jobs' numbers declining. So, the slow-down is a fact, statistically. According to our analyses the decline in unemployment cannot go on with the rates seen recently the reason being that most of the people who could have most probably found jobs.”

On the one hand, there are few competitive specialists outside the labor market but on the other investments in economy are insufficient to boost employment. Despite low qualification some of the unemployed leave the country for jobs abroad, more often than not in richer EU states. There are also a few medics leaving Bulgaria dissatisfied with the working conditions and remuneration in this country.

„There is inertia on the labor market. We expect that by the end of the year the growth of employment will continue”, the analyst also said. Recovery however is only seen in a few big cities while many regions remain untouched by positive developments.

„At the end of last year and the beginning of this one, recovery was evenly distributed in the territory of the country while latest figures we got suggest that most new jobs opened in Sofia and Varna”, comments Alexiev. „There is a worrisome decline seen in the Central Southern Region (Smolyan, Kurdjali and Haskovo) where except for Haskovo, all regions have been losing jobs on an annual basis. And it was the Central Southern Region that led the recovery of the labor market in 2012-2014. The situation in the North-Western and Northern Central regions remains critical, apart from Veliko Tarnovo. The regions of Gabrovo and Rousse remain stable for now, while in North-Western Bulgaria there are zero indications of any progress.”

The question is whether economic development of small Bulgarian towns is deadlocked given that local companies make close to zero investments and foreign capitals that have been the vehicle of the Bulgarian economy before the crisis, show no interest in them. Expensive financial resources, the unstable business environment and the low purchasing capacity of the population have stalled economic activities of both the citizens and the business.

Latest data carried by the Bulgarian National Bank about direct investments for the first 6 months add to the bleak picture though reporting growth just below 2%. Most of investments actually went to the capital of companies meaning they were used to compensate for sustained losses.

English Daniela Konstantinova