site.bta105,000 Industrial Jobs Lost in Bulgaria Between 2019 and 2023
Between 2019 and 2023, a total of 104,557 industrial jobs were lost in Bulgaria, which was nearly 15% of the industrial workforce, said the President of the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB), Plamen Dimitrov, at a press conference on Thursday. Another 13,000 industrial jobs were lost in 2024, he said, adding that the data for 2025 are yet to be released and analyzed.
Dimitrov pointed to a decline in the share of industry in generating gross value added in the Bulgarian economy. According to him, early estimates for 2025 put it below 20%.
In coal mining there has been a sharp drop in the quantities of coal extracted over the past two years, which has led to a decline in electricity generation from this resource and has affected job losses, said Valentin Valchev, chairman of the Federation of Independent Miners’ Trade Unions at CITUB. One thousand jobs have been lost in coal mining over the past two years, he said.
"We have a model that is heavily dependent on domestic consumption, which accounts for three quarters of our growth," said CITUB’s chief economist Lyuboslav Kostov. Foreign direct investment stands at between 2% and 4% of gross domestic product, he added.
According to CITUB, a new industrial strategy and stable integration with the main European economies are needed. The unions also propose establishing a fund to protect vulnerable industries. There must be an active industrial policy that supports the development of industrial sectors producing high value added, Dimitrov said.
/TM/
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