Slovak News Back to the news
Analysts: Joblessness to Rise, Early 2010 Could Be Difficult
Sunday 20 December 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 20(TASR) - Economic analysts expect joblessness in Slovakia to rise in the coming months despite the fact that the unemployment rate stayed flat on a monthly basis at 12.4 percent in November on the back of a gradual recovery in exports and industry, according to a consensus poll taken by TASR.
"You shouldn't underestimate the risk that the turn of the year could feature an administrative postponement of decisions to optimise costs, including those on employment, to the start of January," said Volksbank Slovensko Research chief analyst Vladimir Vano, indicating that the slowdown in new redundancies towards the end of 2009 could be followed by a dramatic surge in the New Year.
UniCredit Bank Slovakia macro-analyst David Derenik thinks that enterprises have already dismissed as many people as they needed to in order to adjust to lower demand. He also noted that some firms continue to report redundancies, however.
Postova Bank analyst Jan Mrvova views the November unemployment figure as stabilisation to a certain extent if not a turn-around. "Although compared to October of this year the unemployment rate hasn't risen, it's a 4.6-percent increase compared to November a year ago," he said.
"Even though the Slovak economy is on the right track of a return to gradual expansion, the race to improve the state of the labour market is far away from completion," said Vano.
All rights reserved. Any publishing or further dissemination of press releases and photographs from TASR's resources without TASR's prior written approval constitutes a violation of the Copyrights Act.
