Employment

Nearly 90 percent of large and medium-sized enterprises affected by the Covid-19 crisis have fully or partially resumed operations in the first week after the lifting of the state of emergency.

This is shown by the data from the CITUB monitoring of over 100 companies in the whole country, announced the national secretary of the union Todor Kapitanov.

About 580,000 people will lose their jobs in the period from March to July 2020, the Hellenic Federation of Enterprises (SEV) estimates in its bulletin on the Greek economy, stressing the need for the immediate utilization of the 1.4 billion euros from the European program SURE. This would amount to €483 per person for five months.

The government will grant up to 30pct of the gross salary to companies that will hire people looking for work, Prime minister Ludovic Orban announced on Wednesday evening. "We will give up to 30pct of the gross salary to companies that will hire jobseekers, that will provide jobs to Romanian citizens who are looking for a job, for a period of at least three months.

OTE telecom will be implementing two new voluntary redundancy programs at the end of the month.
The programs concern more than 400 employees across the various departments and subsidiaries of the group and will cost a total of 55 million euros, or about €130,000 per departing employee on average.

The Kurzarbeit model (flexible work) was discussed with employers and trade unions, but was also presented to the Prime Minister and the Minister of Labor, but there are fears on the government side that it could not be implemented, the president of the Romanian-German Chamber of Commerce (AHK Romania), Dragos Anastasiu stated on Thursday.

More than 156,000 employees from 10, 723 enterprises will keep their jobs thanks to the 60/40 wage support scheme, the Bulgarian Ministry of Labor and Social Policy announced. So far, the National Employment Agency has processed nearly 3,700 applications of Bulgarian employers for state aid which has to cover 60% of the salaries and the social security contributions of over 50,000 workers.

Hundreds of thousands of workers in Balkan countries have lost their jobs due to economic hardship caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, official statistical data show. And many fear the real numbers of job losses could be considerably higher, as not all countries in the region have compiled comprehensive records.

A legislative act is to provide for the extension of the suspension of labor contracts for companies harmed by the coronavirus containment measures until May 31. Thursday would mark the end of the first phase of the measure, which concerned enterprises that were ordered by the government to close on March 13.

Spain's unemployment rate rose to 14.4% in the first quarter of 2020, the National Statistical Institute INE reported today, Reuters reported.

In the previous quarter, unemployment was 13.8 percent - the lowest since the third quarter of 2008, but still the highest for the euro area countries after Greece.

Some 232,000 Turkish businesses affected by the coronavirus economic fallout have made applications to the government for short-time working payments to their 2.7 million employees between March 30 and April 16, according to Family, Labor and Social Services Minister Zehra Zümrüt Selçuk.