Bulgaria’s labour market will stabilise in 2012 and for the first time since the economic crisis started, new jobs will catch up with job losses, UniCredit Bulbank chief economist Christofor Pavlov was quoted as saying by Capital Daily.
 
On February 21 2012, the National Statistics Institute said that unemployment in Bulgaria was 11.4 per cent in the final quarter of 2011. More than half of jobless people had been unemployed for more than a year.
 
Youth unemployment had reached 28 per cent, according to the statistics institute.
 
Pavlov said that IT companies were leading in job creation, having created 5800 jobs in 2011, while they were expected to create a further 7500 jobs in 2012.
 
He said that the IT sector would continue to expand, with job growth of a steady 20 per cent a year.
 
But in other sectors such as industry and commerce, job losses would be 9000 on average.
 
New sectors would emerge, requiring skilled employees. Companies offering outsourced accountancy, legal and consultancy services, among others, would employ 11 500 people in 2011, having created 9200 new jobs in 2011.
 
Small companies and family businesses in Bulgaria were still being hard-hit by the economic crisis. According to the National Statistics Institute figures, about 10 per cent of Bulgarians who had been self-employed or had their own businesses had become unemployed between the final months of 2010 and the end of 2011.
 
Of the total number of unemployed, only six per cent were actively seeking jobs.