Back to normality – unfortunately

which leads us to a peculiar conclusion: unemployment as % of those without jobs to total economically active population can only be decreased (if we speak about substantial decrease) by increasing (substantially) the number of economically active population, which would need active stimulation of immigration while keeping unemployment benefits very low.

would such social policy find support?

Structural unemployment in Latvia is so high simply because the education system simply has not moved to fulfill market oriented economies needs, but has stayed the same as it was in the Soviet times – without teaching individuals how to compete, but simply giving them information, mostly dated.
That is the way I see things in this field.

“That should be a much bigger political issue than it seems to be at the moment – what a waste of resources!”

Let’s start to use resources to upgrade unskilled workers with proffesional skills and we will grow rapidly!

I know that we have strong labour, but so sad that salaries aren’t that good for to pay for proffesional courses, and I am so sad that also our employees don’t think about employer education. They will give first hand to pay less them as to educate them!

Respect! Straight to the point.

This is a solid analysis that has a lot of merit. On the website of the Latvian employment agency you can find the following statistics:

On 31.03.2010. Latvia had 194’253 unemployed.

These are the TOP15 professions of these unemployed:
assistant worker/laborer 13626,00
retail sales person 11511,00
janitor 5778,00
construction worker 4318,00
driver 4144,00
cook 2852,00
guard 2589,00
street cleaner 2455,00
sower 2020,00
tractor driver 1923,00
good loader (hand work) 1877,00
salesperson/consultant 1784,00
wood processing operator 1721,00
mechanic 1648,00
construction worker (2) 1549,00

In total that is about 60’000 people, most of which have no skill.

It’s not the skill the unemployed need, it’s will.

And the fact that we pay them for doing nothing doesn’t help either.

Many of the structurally unemployed, to my experience, are chronic alcoholics, who have degraded to a state they can officially get pensions for disabled, which they use to continue their bad habits.