Analytics, Employment, Estonia, EU – Baltic States

Ansip said that neither the European Commission nor other international institutions support creating the so-called social jobs, i.e. city or state-subsidized jobs for the unemployed.

“Why? Because these social jobs, which as the example of Tallinn shows are clearly non-productive jobs, violate market situation. It will be very hard for the mayor of Tallinn to tell at some point these people who have been hired to the social jobs now that now the economic crisis is over and your contribution is not needed anymore,” Ansip explained.

Ansip added that life has shown that such non-productive jobs will remain a burden to the taxpayers wallet for a long time to come.

Ansip said that instead of creating such social jobs, focus has to be on education as when times are difficult, many states increase the number of state financed student places to keep young people studying rather than be jobless at a street.

“I am quite convinced that tram floors were cleaned before the Tallinn city government decided to create social jobs for tram cleaners and I do not think that they are now 30 times cleaner than they were before” Ansip said.

Tallinn city government, headed by Edgar Savisaar, has this year created hundreds of such social jobs where jobless people have been hired by the city as travel assistants or cleaners of public transport vehicles. The labor exchanges where people have been searched for these jobs have gathered thousands.