Trends and challenges in the Bulgarian labour market

This chapter describes recent economic and labour market developments in Bulgaria. It shows that Bulgaria’s labour market was in a good condition before the outbreak of the COVID‑19 pandemic, with low levels of unemployment and increasing employment rates. The COVID‑19 pandemic had an immediate and strong negative impact on large parts of the Bulgarian labour market and, while many sectors have (almost) recovered by now, the long-run effects of the crisis are not fully known yet. In addition, Bulgaria is confronted with a number of structural challenges weighing on employment prospects, such as a quickly shrinking and ageing population, marked regional differences and a high poverty risk among some parts of the population. Despite the strong improvement in the Bulgarian labour market over the last decade, more than 1 million working-age adults are inactive, many of whom belong to vulnerable population groups.