Employment, Estonia, Good for Business, Society, Wages
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Wednesday, 17.04.2024, 22:55
Government to support job creation in East, Southeast Estonia
"Even though there is a shortage of workforce in Estonia at present,
many people in Southeast Estonia and East-Viru county have no job,"
Minister of Health and Labor Riina Sikkut said.
"The purpose of the assistance is to motivate employers to create
jobs specifically in East-Viru county and Southeast Estonia, where there is
still workforce not employed. Apart from location, a frequent obstacle to
bringing together the employer and the job-seeker is a mismatch of expectations
-- for the skills of the worker on the part of the employer and for
remuneration on the part of the worker. In order for job-creation not to get
stuck behind this, the measure includes compensating the costs of the training
of the employee and it precludes jobs where the minimum wage is paid," the
minister said.
According to latest figures from the Unemployment Insurance Fund, the
rate of registered unemployment was 8.4% in East-Viru county, 8.5% in Valga
county, 7.6% in Voru county and 6.6% in Polva county, compared with the
nationwide average of 4.6%.
The support for job-creation would be paid to employers who create at
least five jobs over a period of two months. The pay going with the job created
must be at least 1.5 times the official minimum wage, or 750 euros a month in
2018.
Under the measure, half of the hired employee's wage will be reimbursed
to the employer, with the eligible wage capped at two times the minimum level
of pay. The person hired must have been unemployed for more than six months and
registered as unemployed in either the East-Viru, Polva, Valga or Voru county.
The maximum amount of training costs to be reimbursed to the employer is
2,500 euros per employee hired.
The regional job creation measure is financed from the European Social
Fund and the period of application runs from the beginning of next year to the
end of 2021. The budget of the measure for the three-year period is
approximately 1.48 mln euros and the creation of an estimated 360 jobs is
expected to be supported.
While there have been no separate labor market measures for regions with
structural problems in Estonia so far, the Unemployment Insurance Fund offered
emergency measures in the country's northeast in connection with large-scale
layoffs in 2015 and 2016. With the help of the measure available from May 2016
to the end of 2017 altogether 645 jobs were created at 17 companies in the
northeastern county.
The new regional job creation incentive builds on the experiences with
the East-Viru regional measure from 2016-2017.