The number of unemployed Slovaks who have never held a full-time job increased in the first quarter of 2012 by almost 15.5 percent year-on-year, the Slovak Statistics Office announced on Thursday, June 7.
While the number of jobless graduates and school-leavers stood at 78,300 for the first three months of 2011, the figure rose to 90,400 during the same period this year. "At a time when the number of new jobs isn't growing, it's easier to sustain a job than to find a new one," Michal Páleník from the Employment Institute told the TASR newswire, adding that this is a difficult situation for newcomers on the labour market.
UniCredit Bank analyst Ľubomír Koršňák points out that there are a sufficient number of jobseekers to choose from, so people adjust their salary expectations to the situation. In this way, young and inexperienced applicants lose their competitive advantage of being cheaper. "So companies tend to choose somebody with experience," said Koršňák, who is expecting no significant improvement in the near future. The only remedy for the current state of affairs is to boost economic growth, he says, adding that he believes all other measures will prove temporary and one-off.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
