Analytics, Employment, Estonia, Legislation, Markets and Companies

"For a long time already labor shortage is not just a need for more programmers, engineers and top specialists. Today employers are making a lot of effort to find hardworking people with professional skills, but also simpler workforce. If we leave aside the specific problem of East-Viru county, more or less everyone who wishes to work and is able to work is employed now, and this is becoming one of the most serious obstacles to Estonia's development," the manager of the Estonian Employers Confederation, Toomas Tamsar, said in a press release.

"Considering the birth and mortality rates, the immigration-emigration ratio, ageing of the population and the fact that not all people of working age participate in the labor market, there will be a shortage of 5,000 workers or taxpayers per year on the average in Estonia until 2040," Tamsar said. "Already in the not very distant future it will become difficult to maintain the present level of public services, not to speak of raising the wellbeing of the people of Estonia."

Tamsaar said one has to remember to make a distinction between the need for foreign labor and the debate on accepting refugees. "Helping refugees happens for humane reasons, when we speak of foreign labor we speak of those whom we need ourselves," he said.

The Estonian Employers Confederation finds that it is not in the interest of Estonia's competitiveness to keep foreigners away from Estonia at any price. Instead, the country should favor hardworking people and people of entrepreneurial spirit taking up residence here.

In order for immigrants to be actually able to integrate into the labor market here, employers consider it necessary that the government analyze and make more flexible the requirements for the employment of foreign nationals. Many of these requirements that we justified once have become obsolete and are hindering the integration of people into the labor market. For instance, in many jobs to which the requirement to be able to speak the Estonian language applies it is not actually necessary. Likewise there's no longer any reason to demand that people hired from third countries be paid 1.24 times the Estonian average wage, employers say.

The government should make a bigger contribution to the integration of immigrants by making available resources and programs for this, including for learning the Estonian language.