Measures of State support for employment in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia

Abstract

According to the EU Eurostat data, for a long period of time, the Baltic countries have been leading the list of countries with high unemployment. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these indicators have become critical in their scale, so the national governments of these countries, with the help of the EU, are trying to change the situation for the better with the help of various measures of state support in the field of employment, stabilize these indicators and bring them to the level of pre-crisis 2019. The purpose of the study is a comprehensive analysis of state support measures of the Governments of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia aimed at providing employment and combating unemployment as one of the factors affecting their socio-economic development. The methodology of the study includes a method of statistical analysis, with the help of which statistical data on the number of unemployed citizens in these countries (for the period 2014-2021) are compared, the dynamics of the population in the period under review is considered. Along with the statistical method, a SWOT analysis was used, on the basis of which the strengths and weaknesses of state support measures of the governments of the Baltic countries in order to support employment, potential threats from their application and new opportunities for supporting unemployed persons were identified. The authors of the study made proposals on the need for structural reforms aimed at improving the labor market in the Baltic states, such as: retraining citizens who lost their jobs during the pandemic, for state account, the introduction of stricter quotas for the entry of citizens from the territory of the former Soviet Union and obtaining a work visa, the provision of additional subsidies to small and medium-sized businesses, the release of their from paying taxes for the period of emerging pandemics.