Acute labor market issues

 For decades, we have heard about labor market problems regarding shortages in specific professions. However, timely identification—meaning planning for workforce needs before a shortage actually arises—has been neglected. This may be partly due to the popularity of so-called foreign labor pools.

Recently, there have been attempts to link unemployment—and the receipt of public funds for housing and basic living expenses—to so-called socially useful work; yet, such work likely involves tasks for which we are not actually qualified. Leaving aside the fact that prison inmates used to call this "forced labor"—since the law cited it as an alternative to a prison sentence or a fine—a question now arises: can we still speak of a welfare state based on solidarity, and what does it mean for a state to be founded on social justice?

There is also the long-standing question of whether it pays to invest in one’s own education, given that years of schooling may yield only personal knowledge that holds no market value—because one fails to secure paid employment. Given the shortage of doctors and a labor market that is increasingly open to young people, a figure from last year is particularly interesting:

Approximate annual number of medical graduates:

In Slovenia, between 250 and 300 students successfully complete their general medicine studies each year across the two medical faculties (in Ljubljana and Maribor).

Based on unemployment figures, one might conclude that there is an ample supply of workers. However, the problem appears to lie in a mismatch of skills, flawed recruitment practices, or issues in the relationship between employers and job seekers. Naturally, recent times have also seen discussions in Slovenia regarding "brain drain"—the emigration of skilled professionals seeking better career opportunities abroad.

There certainly should not be a shortage of unskilled workers in the European labor market. Data from Slovenia suggests this is the case, as fully 30% of registered unemployed persons have only a primary school education or less. In practical terms, this means there should be no shortage of cleaners, production workers, or laborers for basic construction tasks. The EU as a whole does not face this specific issue; rather, the unemployed come from all levels of education.

Another structural aspect of unemployment concerns the so-called "50+ workers"—individuals whose age is often cited as a hindrance (sometimes jokingly attributed to "old age" or their birth date), yet who do not yet qualify for legal retirement or senior citizen status. In Slovenia, this demographic is estimated to account for between 34% and 40% of the unemployed population. The EU does not record such a high number of unemployed older workers. This suggests that Slovenia is once again in a unique position regarding the assessment of work capacity for workers aged 50 and over, or perhaps that the competitive pressure from young people in the labor market is simply too great.

Young workers in Slovenia enter the labor market very quickly; their unemployment rate has likely dropped thanks to various incentives for hiring young workers and, of course, the perception that they possess greater capabilities. The average youth unemployment rate in the EU stands at 15.4%, reaching as high as 20% in some countries.

Although Slovenia’s official unemployment rate is lower than the EU average of 6.1%, approximately 50% of the unemployed individuals registered with the Employment Service have been out of work for more than a year. Currently, there are estimated to be between 17,000 and 18,000 such individuals, despite the existence of various training and even retraining programs.

Across the EU as a whole, approximately 4.2 million people have been without work for more than a year; of these, more than 60% (around 2.5 million people) have been waiting for employment for over two years. Given that the share of the extremely long-term unemployed is rising sharply in countries with higher unemployment rates, it is estimated that there are several hundred thousand people across the EU who have been on the unemployment registers for more than a decade (with the highest numbers in Southern and Eastern European countries).