Unemployment total in December 2020 up 15.9% year-on-year

Ljubljana – The Covid-19 epidemic has left a mark on the Slovenian labour market as a total of 87,283 persons were registered as unemployed at the Employment Service at the end of December 2020, which is up 15.9% year on year, and 3.7% more than at the end of November last year.

The Employment Service reported on Wednesday that 7,735 persons had registered anew last December, while 2,913 had found a job. A total of 4,591 persons were struck out of the unemployed records in that month.

It explained that one of the reasons was the increased number of persons whose fixed-term contracts were not renewed, who accounted for 4,237 among all who were registered anew last December.

The number of newly-registered job seekers was up in December 2020 by 5.2% compared to the month before, while the number of those who found a job last month was down by 36.5% compared to November.

The number of persons registered as unemployed at the end of 2020 was up by 3.7% compared to the end of November.

The Employment Service noted that the growth in unemployment would have been even higher had the government not taken relevant measures, including subsidised furlough and subsidised shortened working time.

Polona Domadenik of the Ljubljana School of Business and Economics has recently assessed for the STA that the government has taken effective measures, but also noted that subsidies are actually the only thing that keeps certain companies afloat.

These subsidies do not cover all the costs of operation or non-operation and, if the trend continues, Domadenik believes that companies will start reducing the number of employees drastically despite the aid.

In the entire 2020, 98,244 persons registered anew at the Employment Service, which is 31.3% more than in 2019, but more unemployed also got a job or got self-employed last year in comparison to 2019, as the number was up by 14.5% to 86,253.

Unemployment was up in all regional units of the service, except Murska Sobota in the north-east (-3%), which nevertheless still records the highest rate. The largest increases was recorded in Koper (+28.6%) and Ptuj (+27.6%).

In December 2020 alone, employers reported 6,869 job vacancies, which is 15.3% less compared to November and 22.7% less than in December 2019. In the entire 2020, the number of reported job vacancies dropped by 22.5% to 114,671.

According to the latest available data (October 2020), Slovenia’s active population numbers 890,542, and the registered unemployment rate is 8.6%, or 1.2 percentage points more than in October 2019.

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