The loss of job may hit even harder than a disease or divorce, psychologists warn. The runners-up on the labor market are incapacitated people, graduates and those who have just returned from institutions of confinement. Job-hunting is twice as hard for them. Those who live in smaller cities and towns or in villages may also join the club. This year the situation may change, though, for the state plans to provide targeted support for the mentioned population clusters. For the first time ever the parents whose children are taken care of by the state will be employed on a mandatory basis. These are the key features of the State Employment Program for 2006.Belarus is not facing a serious employment problem. Labor Minister Antonina Morova reported that unemployment rate fell to 1.5% of Belarus’ workforce in 2005, one of the best results not only in the CIS, but also in Europe.
Nevertheless, some 290,000 people will be looking for new jobs this year. Below is the portrait of the average job-hunter: a woman of 33 with secondary education that has children. This year there will be 93,000 new jobs, 6,000 more than in 2005, so there is always hope.
Understandably, the state budget will not be enough to resolve the unemployment problem. “This money should be spent to support incapacitated people, the young and those who have partially lost working capacity at work,” Prime Minister Sergei Sidorsky told the Council of Ministers during the discussion of the program. “Employers are to help the others. We are to consider the employment problem in Belarusian districts, set up new productions, initiate preferences and tax vacations for those who employ the target groups in order for people to see the future of their employment.”
Besides, the premier specifically mentioned the necessity to provide jobs to graduates. “We have to have a job for every student whose education has been paid for by the state,” Sidorsky said. “Belarusian alumni should be aware that their knowledge and labor will always be in demand,” he added.
The program was adopted as the baseline and will require additional work. The premier demanded that the program should result in specific mechanisms to create jobs in target towns and districts. As is known, it is due to larger cities and towns that the unemployment rate has been brought down so successfully. The key task of the government is not to leave the village behind.
Irina Timofeyeva
