The Vojvodina Research-Analytical Centre (VOICE) said that the government’s claim of a drop in unemployment was a manipulation because the decline in unemployment was caused by mass immigration.
“A huge number of people, especially the young, are leaving the country. They include many who could not get jobs here. The employment rate would be much lower if not for that and the official unemployment figures much higher especially when we know that people are removed from the unemployment records if they don’t report regularly to the employment office,” the leader of the Association of Free and Independent Media, Ranka Savic said for VOICE.
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Economist Dragovan Milicevic added that official figures from the State Statistics Office show that the population has dropped from 7.2 million to 7 million people over the past six years.
“That means that the employment rate would rise even if no one got a job because the rate is calculated by taking the number of employed people aged 20 to 64 and dividing it with the total number of people of that age and there are much fewer of them than there were six years ago,” he told VOICE.
Demography expert Daniela Arsenovic warned that the Serbian economy is yet to face the consequences of the mass immigration not just because people of working age are leaving but also because of less money in the budget and the state pension fund. The main consequences will be a drop in the population and the dying out of parts of the country, she added.
(Danas, 30.05.2019)
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