Eurostat: About 4% of Working Bulgarians were Engaged in Temporary Employment

Bulgaria is among the five EU countries with the lowest proportion of temporary employment, according to Eurostat's analysis of European Union labor market trends in the past year.

Our country has a share of only 4% of temporary workers aged 15-64 in 2018, with an average EU figure of 14%. Thus, according to the native statistics, there were about 130,000 temporary workers in Bulgaria last year, with a total of 3.2 million people who were economically active for the given period. The highest share of temporary workers is registered in the 25-55 age group - nearly 100,000 people.

Another factor that determines temporary employment is the level of education - the highest number of people with primary or lower education - 80,000, with an average of about 40,000 and a higher - about 10,000.

A large part of the temporary staff were without special qualifications, with a focus on the work profession, as well as with the seasonality factor.

The "seasonality" factor remains one of the determinants of the labor market, with a significant number of temporary workers employed, mostly in the hospitality, restaurant, agriculture, manufacturing, construction and other sectors. For example, in 2016, seasonally hired were about 24,000 people, about 20,000 in 2017, and about 20,000 in 2018.

According to experts, the market for poorly qualified staff is considerably narrowed while there is a tendency for search for highly qualified specialists - technical and engineering staff, doctors, nurses, and professions that require high competency.

Thus, for example, the persons with higher education in the country were just over 1 million, while with secondary education, they were about 1.8 million people, and with basic or lower education - about 400 000 people, that is, Two-thirds of the working Bulgarians were of medium or low level of qualification.
 
Almost every third worker in Spain in 2018 had a temporary employment contract (approximately 28%), according to Eurostat data. Other countries with a high proportion of persons engaged in temporary employment are reported in Poland - 24%, Portugal - 22%, the Netherlands - 21%, Croatia - 19%, Italy - 18% and others.

On the reverse pole, the lowest share of temporary employment is reported in Romania - 1.1%, Lithuania (1.6%), Latvia (2.7%), Estonia (3.5%) and Bulgaria - , Eurostat data show. In the EU as a whole, the proportion of temporary staff is higher among younger employees. For those aged 15-24 this share is 43%, compared with 12% for the 25-54 age group and about 7% for the 55-64 age group.

The share of women between 15 and 64 years of temporary employment in the EU in 2018 was 15%, compared with 14% for men. In the case of our neighbors, the data shows that the highest proportion of temporary employment was registered in the Republic of Northern Macedonia - 15%, followed by Serbia - 14%, Turkey - 12% and Greece - 11%, (according to Romania -% and Bulgaria - of 4%), Eurostat data show.