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Bulgaria – Employment agency director decries inefficient job schemes

21 October 2014

The Executive Director of Bulgaria’s Employment Agency, Asen Angelov, has decried the inefficiency of labour market policies, saying that they have remained unchanged for over eight years and only had a temporary effect on the labour market, reports novinite.com

Mr Angelov explained that nearly 400,000 people across Bulgaria have taken part in various training schemes, but the impact on the labour market has been rather insignificant; both in terms of labour productivity and sustainability.

He noted the persistent mismatch between the skills demanded by employers and the lack of skills of the unemployed. Mr Angelov suggested that employment programmes are inadequately targeted and also condemned the lack of planning with regard to investments in supporting the unemployed back into work.

To illustrate his point, he says that the number of unemployed people in the most vulnerable groups; including people aged over 50, people with little or no formal education, the long-term unemployed, and the permanently disabled, have been growing for the past eight years, despite the availability of employment programmes.