MidnightCall Magazine
News From Israel MagazineEconomic Growth Forces Nation To Import Workers
For years, Bulgaria has been a source of cheap labor for western Europe. Now the tables have been turned on the Black Sea state, as it finds itself facing an acute shortage of workers and turning to far-reaching measures to make up the shortfall: inviting Vietnamese to fill jobs in manufacturing and construction.
Economic growth, set to be more than 6 percent again this year, has exposed the shortage of skilled workers in the European Union’s poorest member state.
About 1m Bulgarians are working overseas, according to official estimates – the result of a decade of mass emigration by graduates and skilled workers. The official unemployment rate has fallen from 18 percent of the workforce in 2002 to less than 6 percent.
The labor market is especially tight in Sofia and the Black Sea port of Varna, the fastest-growing cities since Bulgaria joined the EU last year. Both have jobless rates of less than 3 percent.
The decision to seek workers from Asia follows a successful campaign to persuade the 500,000-strong Bulgarian diaspora in Moldova and Ukraine to return home by offering a fast-track process to acquire Bulgarian citizenship.
The skills shortage is highest in construction, tourism and IT, according to Dikran Tabeyan, deputy chairman of the Bulgarian Industrial Association. “This summer there are between 80,000 and 100,000 positions left unfilled,” he says. “Workers are in a position to select their employer.”
Although private sector wages are still competitive with Romania and central Europe, they jumped 24 percent in the first quarter after rising 23 percent last year.
-Financial Times, 8 July 2008, pg. 3
Bulgaria is being made rich through the European Union. The same thing happened to Ireland, the UK, Greece and Spain, to name a few. We are witnessing here the tendency towards the fulfillment of Revelation 18:3: “For all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her, and the merchants of the earth are waxed rich through the abundance of her delicacies.” This verse describes the mixture of politics, religion, and commerce. Europe, as the world’s biggest exporter and importer, is now leading the world, utilizing its much-praised social capitalism. But as we know from Scripture, that, too, will come to an end in due time.
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