Bulgaria has lost exactly 104,557 jobs in industry in the period between 2019 and 2023. This represents nearly 15 percent of the total workforce in the sector, with the manufacturing industry being the hardest hit. The data was presented by the Confederation of Independent Trade Unions in Bulgaria (CITUB) on the occasion of the “European Day of Action in Industry“.
According to the unions, our country is registering one of the highest rates of job losses in all of Europe. The negative trend not only does not stop, but is also deepening. In 2024 alone, nearly 13 thousand additional positions were eliminated. "The unemployment rate in Bulgaria remains historically low, but employment is falling dramatically and there are no signs of a turnaround", said the president of the Confederation of Bulgarian Trade Unions Plamen Dimitrov.
Coal production has seen a "catastrophic decline" of 50 percent in recent years, and metal production is in a severe crisis with a decline of over 30 percent. The situation is similar in the chemical industry. Against this background, only the arms industry and mechanical engineering are growing, which, however, fails to compensate for the overall loss of markets and production.
Plamen Dimitrov warned that the economic downturn in Germany has directly affected Bulgarian enterprises over the past three years. The Confederation of Bulgarian Trade Unions called on the government to stop the model of exporting raw materials and switch to an active industrial policy focused on products with high added value and affordable energy.