Analytics, Covid-19, Employment, Latvia, Markets and Companies, Wages

"Unemployment, most believably, will grow. Availability of employees in the market has already increased, and it will leave an impact on wages. Also, we will see different variants of cooperation between the employer and employees, there will be more frequent employment for a period of certain projects," she said.

"Many companies have changed their wage policy. I think that about 65 percent of companies have frozen their plans to recruit new people. Also development projects have been suspended," said Arste-Avotina, adding that these processes will continue and many employers will have to make unpopular decisions.

She said that it cannot yet be evaluated how useful state support mechanism will be. On the one hand, they help to survive companies that are in trouble, but, on the other hand, they prolong "slow death" of those companies whose business model had not been ideal.

As reported, according to the Central Statistical Bureau's data, the actual unemployment rate in Latvia comprised 7.7% this past October, which is 0.3 percentage points less than in September. Unemployment rate registered by the State Employment Agency accounted for 7.4%, which is also 0.3 percentage points less than in September, the Statistical Bureau said.