Eleven percent of employers in Bulgaria are looking for qualified people outside the country. These are the results of a study of Manpower Bulgaria's workforce "Borderless Workforce research".

According to the survey the engineers, who come mainly from Germany and Britain are very attractive to the Bulgarian employers.

Foreign professionals are wanted in the sectors of information technology, finance, insurance and business services. The agriculture sector does not rely on foreigners. The employers in Sofia are most open to foreign employees.
Foreign companies based in Bulgaria are more willing to hire foreigners while Bulgarian companies use foreign workers rarely.

The employers in Bulgaria are most concerned by the fact that skilled personnel are leaving the country to work abroad. According to the data 73% of employers in the country had worry about external migration of the local workforce. In Greece this per cent is 72% of employers. 

Companies in other countries are also increasingly concerned about qualified personnel leaving the country: 56% Romania, Italy (55%), Ireland (53%), Slovenia (53%) and South Africa (52%). Least concerned about out flowing employees are Swiss, Belgian and Dutch employers. 86% of Bulgarian employers think that both government and private sector are not doing enough to attract the skilled workers that left the country

In 2011 an increase by 23% of published positions was reported for the first time since 2008 according to Jobs.bg' manager Plamen Voushev during a press conference on: "What is Jobs.bg and how it works? Data of the largest media career in Bulgaria Jobs.bg show that 253,301 job openings were published during the last year. The bad news is that the applicantions are also increasing by 13 %. " There is uneven distribution on the labor market. For positions that do not require specific experience and skills, there are thousands of candidates, while other more specific positions attract only few people. This is the case with IT positions where demand is intense. That is why a lot of employers complain about the lack of candidates against the huge number of people seeking work. There is one positive tendency: besides the traditional IT and customer service, scope of activities is expanding. Examples include international companies such as HP and Coca-Cola, who gave part of their human resources function in Bulgaria.

In 2012 a new IT company will enter because it has decided to outsource its financial department in the country. It plans to hire initially between 200-300 experts in financial and accounting experience and knowledge of language in order to to reach 1,000 in the coming years.

 The manager of jobs.bg thinks that people must be ready to grow because the economies are changing. It is a good time to invest in learning a foreign language. According to Plamen Voushev if a person decides to invest in learning a foreign language he or she needs between 6 and 12 months in order to reach a level of knowledge required to start work.

http://www.jobs.bg/hc/analytics/2466

The Bulgarian IT labour market has developed dynamically since 2001, but 2011 is the year of recession- the average salary in the sector is 1000,67 lv which is a 1,8 % drop compared to the salaries in 2010. Bonus packs fall almost 60 % (1228 lv. compared to 2818 in 2010).

Employees in Sofia get the highest salaries; they earn 1260 lv. which is 26 % more than all other IT specialists from the sample. Personnel in cities with population over 100 thousand people get 844 lv. per month, while those in cities with less than 100,000 inhabitants - only 645 lv. Foreign private companies pay the highest salaries (average 1455 EUR) as ITC professionals aged between 26 and 35, have the best salaries. As previous years men are better rewarded for their labor than women. They earn 1040 leva a month while women - 949 lv / month. Highest-paid positions for 2011 are testing and QA-engineer, network engineer, web developer / web designer, senior programmer / software specialist /software engineer, manager of IT company.

A large part of the non-certified staff (68%) works in Sofia (59% of IT staff in small towns have no certificate). Overall 76.6% of specialists from around the country are graduates.The net monthly salary of ITC workers with bachelor's degree is 1118 leva, and employees who have completed only secondary school, earn an average salary of 799 BGN per month.

Administration of systems and databases is the most popular ITC skill in 2011, application development and network administration are in top 3. IT management processes in ITIL is another interesting skill. Speaking in public is already in the top 3 non-technical skills as well as foreign language (40%) and teamwork (74.7%).

Unsatisfied employees this year are mainly employed in the administration and specialist in ITC companies operating in Sofia and in larger companies (over 50) as well as specialists, whose salary has been reduced. In addition, this year a higher degree of unsatisfaction was observed in ITC specialists with higher pay - 54% of workers in the sector who receive a salary from 2001 to 3000 BGN said they were unsatisfied with their remuneration. Overall, 48% of all IT professionals are satisfied with their pay.

Most of the ITC specialists (85%) have an employment contract and a full-time position; freelancers are 11% of the total sample. This year only 6% of ITC professionals in the sector have changed their jobs. 33% of the HR managers in IT companies intend to increase their staff this year.

The main problems of ITC specialists in 2011 are higher level of stress (33%), lack of adequate pay increase (26%) and budget constraints (23%). One fifth of employees in the sector believe that there is no economic crisis in the industry, 38% expect to experience improvements by the end of this year or next year. However, a significant part (36% vs 25% in 2010) feel that the sector is deteriorating. The conscious choice of an employer and a job is extremely important in the field of ITC, because there is a high demand of employees; it is difficult to satisfy the hunger for professionals.  People seeking employment are in a better position, but organizations try to manipulate their choices. Of course, it doesn’t mean that they create illusions, it is a "fair game" based on the already established "rules". There is an accurate term for this - "employer branding", or "developping a good employer brand."

Source: ICT Media

About 45,5% of the population of Bulgaria who are above 15 years old have work. Data of the National Statistical Institute show that the percentage of employed people is reduced with about 4,5% per yearly base down to 2,94 million people for the second trimester of 2011. The population of Bulgaria for the 1st February 2011 is 7 364 570 people of whom 40% are employed. The decline is bigger in men where the index drops with 5,7% reaching 1,53 million people, compared to the women where 1,4 million have work which is 3,1% less for the second trimester of the previous year.

During the period of the second trimester of 2010 till the second trimester of 2011 the most significant decline is in the number of the employed people with elementary or lower degree of education – decline of 14,4%, while the decline of the employed with higher education is 0,5%. By status the employed people are: employers – 109.3 thousand or 3,7%; self employed non-employers – 220,8 thousand or 7,5%; employees – 2,57 million or 87,6%; and non-paid family workers – 32,5 thousand or 1,1%. Compared to the second trimester of 2010 the number of the employed from all of the given categories has decreased, where the biggest percentage in this decline is in the number of the self-employed – 11,7%. The percentage of employed people in the private sector has decreased with 4,2% down to 1,86 million people and the percentage of the employed in the public sector has dropped with 2,4% down to 713 thousand.

Between the second trimester of 2010 and the second trimester of 2011 the number of the employed in the field of industry has decreased with 11,3% as for the remaining sectors – agriculture, forestry and services the employed people are 4,4 and 0,6% less.

During the second trimester of 2011 the share of employed people in the field of services reaches 61,5% of the employed in all sectors, in the field of industry – 31,2% and in agriculture and forestry – 7,3%. For the same period the number of unemployed people in the country is 369,8 thousand and the coefficient of unemployment is 11,2%. Compared to the same trimmest of 2010 the number of unemployed has increased with 27,6 thousand or 8,1% and the coefficient of unemployment – with 1,2 points. For the given period the coefficient of unemployment has risen with 1,7 points for men and with 0,6 for women, while for the second trimester of 2011 it for women.

Source: BusinessWeek Magazine