NATIONAL AND REGIONAL CHARACTERISTICS OF UNEMPLOYMENT IN SERBIA

The existence of market (so the labour market) forms the natural systematic environment that ensures improving economic effectiveness. Over developing market economy the number of employees has been decreasing in every former socialist country, as a natural consequence. With the ceasing of the former socio-economic order - which ignored economic rationality, capital accumulation, productivity and national/international competitiveness - many unreasonable jobs have disappeared. The market is effectively sanctioning the phenomenon of latent unemployment, making it to serve profit earning. Transition to market economy is painful, causing huge transitional costs and requires waiver from the inhabitants.
Employment and unemployment (together with its current economic and social consequences) are indicators of the process, dynamics and quality of transition. Transitional countries on the Balkans first experienced the emerging decrease of production at the beginning of the 1990's. National income per capita automatically reordered the ranking of these countries. The number of employees in private companies (especially in micro companies) is constantly increasing, while the number of those in state-owned economic subjects is slowly but continuously decreasing. Flexible forms of employment (part-time job, self-employment etc.) are essentially not present in Serbian labour market.
The phenomenon of emigration and black economy are the following processes in these transformations. The past twenty years can be characterized by intensive emigration of the population mainly towards welfare states (temporarily employed abroad, brain drain, brain flight) due to problems of unemployment, low wages, and economic and political crisis. According to estimates there are 2.5 million (others say four million) Serbians or people with Serbian origins who live outside of Serbia. This can be explained either by development level of the region, its regional identity or autonomy. Maybe the biggest challenge for employment policy in transition countries is the problem of black economy. According to the World Bank's report from 2006 43% of all employees are in the non-official sector, and 26.7% of people are illegally employed at employers.
One example of inequality in Serbia is discrimination in the world of work based on gender. It can be also found ethnic-based inequalities at the labour market of Serbia. There is also inequality based on the place of origin (village or town) concerning willingness for further training, and in employment. Refugees have worsened the problem of unequal opportunities since their official number reached 303,769 in 2007, while 27.9% of them were unemployed.
In an European comparison the employment rate of active population in Serbia (51%) is low, otherwise the unemployment rate is very high in region of neighboring countries (16%). Focus on the group of unemployed, there is a huge proportion of people with secondary school qualifications and young people. About 50% of all unemployed are form the active population younger than 34. In 2009 loss of employment was the most drastic in the following business sectors: processing industry 23%, trade 23%, education 15%, real estate 9%, construction 6%, transport and catering industry 4-4%.
Examples from the European Union also show that there is no universal receipt for resolving the problem of unemployment. Member countries have to strive to create and permanently keep up flexibility of labour market, so with this to provide better work and life conditions to their citizens. Employment is the best form of social integration, which is among the EU priorities for the 21Pst century.
In a macro - regional comparison the employment and unemployment indicators of Vojvodina are less favorable in all respects. The activity rate is 2.2% below the rate in Central Serbia. The employment rate is 1.7% lower than the employment rate in Central Serbia. Unemployment is higher in Vojvodina compared to both Serbia and Central Serbia, being 15.8%. Because of these facts the possibilities of regional development have to be considered.
Regional development in Serbia faces enormous regional differences. In general, the causes of differences are the underdeveloped infrastructure, lack of qualified human capital and lack of entrepreneurial spirit. An important idea points out the necessity of increased labour mobility within the region, since this way the strict structure of the regional labour market may become flexible. According to the Serbian Regional Development Strategy every region (district) has to define its on toolset of employment policy in tune with the needs specific to that region and in order to improve employment opportunities and increase employment in the region. However, because of centralized financial authority, actions of regional employment policy are impossible to realize over the current competition system of central authorities. Employment policy measures may be effective at regional level over delegating competences to Vojvodina. According to sections 65 and 66 of the Law on Establishing the Competences of the autonomous Province of Vojvodina, AP Vojvodina regulates, coordinates and controls employment policy on its territory as a delegated competence. Still the National Employment Service plays major role in the realization with that the coordination of decentralised departments is organized over a regional institution (Pokrajinska služba za zapošljavanje), which also initiates further programs.
As conclusion of this paper I could summaries the following theses:
- Serbia has experienced high losses (professional, moral and material) of labour in the process of transition.
- Experiencing regional differences the Serbian / Vojvodian labour faces new challenges and conditions of success.
- Regional self-organization as a manifestation opportunity of labour does not function in Serbia, even though it has been proven at national economy level that most of the problems could not be solved from the centre. It has also been proven that although tasks and recommendations could be delegated, but their realisation is impossible because of the centralization of financial sources.
- Concerning development of labour there is no approaching, harmonization of interests or communication between business and administrative subjects.
- The political elite is calling attention to the problems only by compiling several strategic documents and generalizing the problems (adult education strategy, employment strategy, migration strategy, strategy on preventing discrimination etc.). The putting into practice of strategies listed in the documents have still not been realized, and in my opinion it will neither be realizable in the long run by the central authorities.
- Due to the pressure of central authority structures regional-local inability to action has prevailed the country.
- In the inability vacuum caused by centralization, individuals (employees, unemployed) try to adjust to market requirements with ad hoc decisions. Conscious EU and real market economy principles reformulate market requirements, while economic subjects are forced to adjust to them.
The competent, competitive human resources in the region (as part of the national economic) could concentrate on economic development, competitiveness, investment attraction, productivity, economic growth, efficiency, acceleration of transition and reform processes, as well as the final (desired) objective of constructing EU system of values, realizing EU ambitions - only by decentralized, legitimate, regional institutional, financial and conditions for enforcing interests. In human capital development the emphasis has to be on economic rationality, irrespective of the current development policy beliefs of institutions, revealed in conversations between sectors.

Keywords: employment, process of transition, regional differences, regional employment policy