Analytics, Baltic, Labour-market, Latvia, Shadow economy

Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (SSE Riga) Professor Arnis Sauka said at a conference dedicated to shadow economy problems today, that there are between 15,000 to 20,000 persons employed illegally in Latvia at the moment, with about 60% of them employed in construction.

Sauka said that business representatives have warned about this problems on many occasions, but politicians have not reacted much. ''We have already warned that with the improvement of the economic situation, companies need additional employees. Here we need a well thought-out migration policy, which does not see fundamental changes in legislation. We need a legislation which allows for guest workers to arrive easily, and leave just as easily. At the moment, Latvia's policy has been to ignore this issue,'' he said.

As reported, the proportion of the shadow economy in Latvia rose by 2.2 percentage point last year to 24.2%.

The number of illegal workers in 2009-2018 (working without an agreement in% of the total number of employees) (LT - Lithuania, LV - Latvia, EE - Estonia)