Belarusian government approves program on labor market, employment promotion

The key tasks for the period till 2025 include the stimulation of economic activity of the population, efforts to encourage idle Belarusians to work, efforts to ensure the balance of supply and demand on the labor market, and the improvement of working conditions and occupational health and safety.

Nearly Br221.7 million will be spent on implementing the government program.

The unemployment rate is expected not to exceed 4.2% by 2025. The number of people working in harmful or hazardous working conditions is supposed to be reduced by at least 8% in comparison with 2020.

Unemployed Belarusians will continue enjoying support aimed at encouraging them to start their own business, explore handcraft business opportunities and farm tourism ones. Career fairs will be arranged, including digital ones.

Plans have been made to create an information system for labor market forecasts as well as a universal integrated digital platform of the national qualifications system.

A pilot project will be implemented to test independent evaluation and certification of qualifications in the social services sector and the civil engineering sector.

Experts expect the available workforce will be further redistributed between branches of the economy in 2021-2025. The number of people working in the manufacturing sector and in agriculture is expected to go down.

The trends are attributed to the modernization of manufacturing processes and the introduction of resource-saving technologies, growing labor productivity, and efforts to reduce superfluous workforce. The number of agricultural workers will be reduced faster due to the decreasing availability of able-bodied citizens in rural areas.

Similar dynamics will be observed with regard to the number of working Belarusians. It is attributed to the falling number of employable-age Belarusians and the completion of the process launched in 2017 to gradually raise the retirement age.