There Are Increasingly More Layoffs In Belarus But There Is No Working Force

• 17.02.2022, 13:57

The labour market may face a colossal shortage of workers.

According to the Ministry of Labour and Social Protection of Belarus, employers reported information on the availability of 95.8 thousand vacancies as of February 1, 2022. On the same date, 6.3 thousand people were registered as unemployed.

In January 2022, 7.8 thousand people applied for assistance in finding a job. 4.5 thousand people were employed for permanent work, 155 people were sent for training in professions that are in demand on the labour market, 5 families of the unemployed were relocated to a new place of residence and work. Demand for blue-collar workers accounted for 64.2% of the total number of vacancies.

In 2021, the number of people employed fell twice as fast as in 2020 and reached its lowest level in decades. What do these figures say? What is the situation in the labour market? The web resource Belorusy I Rynok is investigating.

There are fewer employed people as well as pensioners and the unemployed

It turns out that the laid-off and downsized ones are in no hurry to get a job: according to official statistics, as of January 1, 2022, employers announced that there were 92,000 job offers, which is 27.8% more than on January 1, 2021, when the database had 72 thousand job offers. At the same time, the demand for blue-collar workers increased, reaching 64.2% of the total number of vacancies (against 61.5% a year earlier). Surprisingly, those laid-off and downsized ones are in no hurry to register at the labour registry office: “As of January 1, 2022, 5.3 thousand people were registered as unemployed, which is 26.1% less than on January 1, 2021,” reports the Ministry of Labour.

Does everything look great in the labour market? Journalists asked Elena Artyomenka-Meliancava.

According to her, the fact that the number of people employed in Belarus has decreased is a sad fact, since this is both a potentially smaller amount of GDP and worse provision of the existing social protection system (working people pay pensions to current pensioners).

“This is a negative marker of demographic and socio-economic processes that contribute to an increase in the proportion of the population older than working age and a fall in the proportion of the working population. And this trend will continue,” the sociologist is sure.

At the same time, it is impossible not to notice: after journalists drew attention to the fact that in January-August, even in Minsk (where things are much better with the availability of medical care and places in hospitals for the patients with Covid), there were fewer pensioners by 8.5 thousand, the authorities classified statistics on the number of pensioners. However, where did all laid-off and downsized people disappear, if they did go neither to labour registry offices nor to pension retirements? There are two options: either pensioners (and not only) began to die more often, or people abandoned the country in droves.

Or maybe you shouldn't dramatise the situation? Maybe state-owned enterprises have finally begun to get rid of excess labour suddenly after more than a year of discussions on the matter of a number of employees and optimization.

“The fact that modernization leads to the reduction of employment, is correct. But at the same time, the released labour resources should be absorbed by the private sector. That is not the case. Although it should be noted that the largest state-owned enterprises have seriously lost in the number of employees over the past 10 years. Speaking about Grodno Azot or Mogilevkhimvolokno, we can tell that about 30% of workers were laid off. As a result, the share of those employed in the private sector today exceeds the share of those who work in state-owned enterprises.”

There are even more recent reports that people are being fired for political reasons in the country, and also valuable specialists are fired, whose training has sometimes been going on for decades, there is simply no one to replace them. It has negative consequences, doesn't it?

“There is no serious threat to the system. There are still some issues: the quality of work will decrease as well as the indicators of innovative products, the use of high technologies will fall also, the industry will lose ground for growth, but much worse consequences for the dismissal of such specialists will come for the professionals themselves. It is also because of the shortage of a normal system of support for people who lost their jobs. The same unemployment benefits are extremely low,” the sociologist is sure.

There is a shortage of drivers and builders

As mentioned above, the number of blue-collar job offers has increased in the country in a short time, even according to official statistics. There is an acute shortage of drivers and builders, not the first day and not even a year. According to experts working in the recruiting industry, there are several reasons for this. The main ones are low wages within the country against the background of similar ones outside it and the relative ease of finding employment due to a shortage of labour. Such is the case of plasterers and brick-masons, taxi drivers and truckers, all of them easily find jobs not only in Russia but in Lithuania and Poland, where they earn more, local pros moved to Western Europe from the countries. Not to mention doctors (whose employment in Poland was simplified) and nurses.

But indeed they dismiss not only blue-collar workers but also high-class pros. It can be assumed that they occupied positions with “above average” salaries, which means that it should be easier to find candidates for big money. But it's not like that.

Director of the recruitment agency KIAT Igar Kochatau said that large organisations are experiencing serious problems with hiring staff while looking for candidates: “Our recruitment agency specialises in narrow groups of vacancies that are not always related to the state of the general market in the country: information technology, management, sales, supplies. We do not deal with job placement, we select personnel for our clients, and I can critically declare that in the regions, in which we have a specialisation, the shortage of specialists is great. Basically, there is no working force!

According to Iryna Shatkouskaya, director of the Kollekciya Otkrytij recruitment agency, which recruits personnel in half a dozen industries, the recent trend has been the selection of rare specialists: “Not just professionals with a high level of training, with solid experience and advanced skills, but people with rare knowledge and experience in a narrow specialisation. Both the private companies and the state unitary enterprises deal with us, and now the demand for such specialists exceeds the offer in the market.”

The observations of the director of a recruitment agency lead to the conclusion that the demand for unique specialists professionals, people with unusual skills, is also growing. In this case the complexities with the search for worthy candidates regularly appear. Is this related to the low wages offered by Belarusian companies?

“There are different reasons, including the one you mentioned. But I will not say that it is the only one or the main one. Yes, sometimes a low salary appears in the requests, and this does not attract candidates, but it happens sometimes that there are good money and high-level requirements at the same time. But specialists with the appropriate qualifications do not often change their jobs, as a rule, they are highly regarded by companies because they know how difficult it is to find a highly qualified professional, and even with experience in a certain field,” Iryna Shatkouskaya summed up.