Skills & labour markets

Serbia’s labour market has turned from a shortage of jobs to a shortage of people. Most adults now work, the working-age population shrinks each year, and employers struggle less to find workers in general than to find specific skills and experience. Adults rarely go back to learning, in work or out of it, so firms, the state and employers abroad compete for the same people, while those still outside work find few second routes in.

The public tools for this are small next to the task: spending on active labour market programmes is low, employment counsellors carry heavy caseloads, and adult learning has little funding and a narrow offer. Most firms, small ones above all, train only when a need arises, and few programmes help them build the skills of the people they already employ as technology and AI change the work. Those least reached are the ones who most need a second route: women outside the labour force, older workers, adults with little schooling, Roma, and young people leaving vocational school. The question for policy is how employment services, schools, training providers and employers could share the work of keeping skills current, and how to judge it by who learns and who finds work.

We co-wrote the Regional Cooperation Council’s study of what employers across the region need in ICT skills and reviewed the OECD’s assessment of human capital policies in Serbia and Montenegro; the founder’s earlier work surveyed employers on skills needs and work-based learning.

For a company, the question is no longer only what people cost, but whether the right ones can be found and kept. Shortages are sharpest for experienced technicians, engineers, senior software staff and health workers; foreign workers fill only part of the gap, and minimum wage rises and public sector raises push pay up for everyone. Hiring away from competitors lifts the whole pay scale, and the training leaves with the staff. The firms that stand out plan their workforce before they choose a site, build their own pipeline through internships and work-based learning with local schools, and offer a path in pay and responsibility that keeps people. Because adults rarely learn after school, there is also room for training providers and company academies.

We read a firm’s people from its own accounts, staff and staff costs year by year, the market around it from employer surveys and labour statistics, and the public pay and programmes that compete for the same people.