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This article was published in the Career & Employment Guide 2023, our special annual publication focused on the labour market, human resources and education.
When Russian troops invaded her homeland, Olena Martynchuk, co-owner and director of an IT company in Kyiv, fled Ukraine with her children and her mother and headed for Bratislava.When Russian troops invaded her homeland, Olena Martynchuk, co-owner and director of an IT company in Kyiv, fled Ukraine with her children and her mother and headed for Bratislava.
Joining a Facebook group for foreigners, she asked about accommodation and tips for life in the city. One member of the group who responded offered clothes for her children, and when they met up a few days later also said she would help Martynchuk find a job.
Not long after, she was offered a post at an IT company.
“I was quite lucky compared to some other Ukrainians who arrived in March 2022,” Martynchuk said, adding that with a decent knowledge of a foreign language – in her case English – and relevant experience it is not difficult to find a job in Bratislava.
But her experience is more the exception than the rule: experts say that many refugees, including those with university educations, have ended up in jobs for which they are vastly overqualified.
“Slovakia is a long way from using Ukrainian refugees’ potential to make up what’s missing in Slovakia’s labour force,” said Mário Lelovský, vice-president of the IT Association of Slovakia.
Filling mostly low-skilled positions
Interior Ministry data suggest that by April 17, 2023, more than 1.35 million Ukrainian refugees had crossed into Slovakia since the start of the Russian full-scale invasion. Over the same period, 1.05 million left.
Meanwhile, the Labour Ministry registered 17,073 employment contracts signed with refugees from Ukraine by April 17, 2023, with another 18,659 having already been terminated. These people found jobs mostly in administration (28.11 percent), manufacturing (23.31 percent), professional, scientific and technical activities (7.31 percent), accommodation services and gastronomy (7.22 percent), wholesale and retail (6.9 percent), and health and social care (4.4 percent).
“The refugees from Ukraine who applied for temporary protection status mostly filled low-qualified positions,” said Kristína Korenková, spokesperson for the Labour Ministry, adding that many of these jobs were ones which Slovaks saw as unattractive long-term career options.
These included work on assembly lines, auxiliary positions in mining, construction, production and transport, operators of stationary machines and equipment, and cleaners and helpers. Refugees had only limited success in finding more qualified posts, Korenková added.
Nikola Richterová, spokesperson for the Profesia recruitment company, which runs the largest job-search website in Slovakia, agreed, pointing out that this was despite the fact most refugees applying for work had university-level education.
Barriers to entry
To help Ukrainian refugees granted temporary protection status – a status which allows them to live and work in Slovakia – legislation was passed, dubbed the ‘Lex Ukraine’, to aid integration. Among other things, the new law simplified the process for hiring Ukrainian citizens, giving them quick and unlimited access to the labour market without the bureaucracy that they would have been required to complete prior to the war.
However, Ukrainians still have a number of barriers to overcome when seeking employment, Martin Kahanec, an analyst with the Central European Labour Studies Institute (CELSI), told The Slovak Spectator.
Since Ukraine is not an EU member, jobseekers struggle to get their education and professional qualifications recognised. Moreover, some jobs, for example in law and accounting, require applicants to speak Slovak, or understand local laws.
“This prevents many higher-qualified Ukrainians from finding a job corresponding to their level of qualification, so they take up posts in support positions,” Kahanec said.
The language barrier has been a problem for Anna Kurchenko. The 34-year-old left Kyiv with her 83-year-old grandmother and travelled at first to Liptovský Mikuláš before relocating to Martin.
In Ukraine she was a leading document management specialist, working for a state institution. But when she went to her local labour office in Slovakia, all she was offered was a part-time position as a gallery host at the Turiec Gallery in Martin. She worked there for eight months, but the contract has since ended.
She says she has little hope of finding a job in her chosen field.
“I will not be able to find a job in document management in Slovakia,” Kurchenko said. “You need to know the language and at least have a residence permit.”
Kahanec pointed to another problem for employers considering taking on Ukrainians: the uncertainty around how long they will remain in the country.
“Because of this, firms tend to hire them for support positions, and not invest in their career growth,” he explained.
Changes adopted, but problems remain
While legislation has been brought in to make it easier for Ukrainians to find work, lawmakers have also simplified the process for other third-country nationals (i.e. foreigners coming from non-EU countries) to find work and stay in Slovakia.
An amendment to the law on employment services which became effective on January 1, 2023 removed a restriction which meant third-country nationals could only be hired in districts where the registered unemployment rate is below 5 percent.
It also made it easier for skilled workers and their employers to meet conditions to renew individuals’ temporary residency permits.
“The changes will help keep qualified workers in the same jobs, which is particularly needed in occupations where there are existing labour shortages, for example in health care,” the Labour Ministry explained.
But problems remain for skilled workers from non-EU countries, such as conditions for obtaining a so-called national visa, i.e. permission to stay on the territory of the issuer or another EU member state for up to 90 days. National visas may be issued with a maximum validity of up to one year. Lelovský said efforts to get the Labour Ministry to drop conditions on the level of higher education for visa applicants had been unsuccessful.
“We’ve failed to persuade the Labour Ministry not to condition the visa on a completed postgraduate university degree since most graduates from IT faculties only have a bachelor’s degree, despite [their bachelor’s degree] being comparable with our graduates’ master’s degree,” he said.
In 2022, a legislative change allowed for the national visas for 90 day stays in Slovakia and other EU countries to be granted for relocated third-country nationals and their family members. This sped up the process of hiring skilled and highly-qualified workers, said Peter Rusiňák, senior policy manager and coordinator of the Business Service Center Forum (BSCF), a sectoral organisation running under the American Chamber of Commerce.
“Unfortunately, despite the saturation of the Slovak labour market from the point of the availability of qualified experts, only very few of them are foreigners,” he added.
Bureaucracy remains a problem too, with long waiting periods for foreigners to book an appointment with the Foreigners’ Police to deal with administrative matters, particularly in Bratislava, Rusiňák noted.
Kahanec said the state must continue to make it easier to employ foreigners.
“Foreigners bring expertise, especially where it is needed most – where our economy has bottlenecks due to a lack of qualified labour,” he said. “Foreigners make the economy more dynamic, help create jobs and improve employment conditions for everyone.”
