Labour Minister says poor skill sets of local unemployed people makes importing increasing numbers of foreign workers inevitable.
Svetoslav Todorov
Over the past three years, Bulgaria has recruited more than 108,000 foreign workers to address a growing labour shortage, the Minister of Labour and Social Policy, Nataliya Efremova, said on Monday.
Efremova noted that unemployment in Bulgaria is very low – between 2.8 and 3.2 per cent – but the low skills of many of the local jobless means workers must be recruited abroad.
“There are groups of people registered with the employment offices, but unfortunately nearly half of them are very low-skilled or have no qualifications at all. This is the major challenge that the labour market faces nowadays. It is the reason why employers are increasingly looking abroad in an effort to secure the workforce they need,” Efremova told Bulgarian media.
In 2026, the number of foreign workers not coming from the EU, usually from Central Asia, mainly Uzbekistan, as well as Indonesia, Nepal and India, is expected to peak.
According to data from Bulgaria’s National Employment Agency, released in March, before the summer tourist season began, 18,989 new foreign workers had already started working in the country and the total number is expected to surpass the previous peak number in 2025 – 49,179 workers.
In Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second biggest city, people from Uzbekistan and India are entering the workforce as drivers in public transport. On July 8, Bulgarian National Television reported that around 150 drivers from these countries will now start navigating the streets of Plovdiv, with their employment secured from a partnership between a recruiting firm and the municipality.
A representative of the recruitment firm told the channel that one of the reasons for importing these foreigners is the elderly age profile of most local drivers.
On the websites of the various recruitment agencies, worker groups are often divided into whether they are needed short-term, for months, or for a full year.
Workers from Asia are tempted by the better wages on offer in Bulgaria, which are at least double what they might expect at home. Apart from service jobs, some have also entered agriculture.
According to Trading Economics, a financial analytics platform, in Uzbekistan, a former Soviet state, the minimum wage is less than 87 euros per month, while the average monthly wage is around 424 euros. In Bulgaria, the national minimum wage is about 620 euros per month.
These migrant drivers are coming to Plovdiv at a sensitive time, when many locals are often protesting about poor transport links, the fragmented traffic network and a complete reliance on private transport firms.
Earlier this year, BIRN, looked into the limited protection that workers from Asia receive in the region, focusing on Bangladeshi migrants in Romania.
Another recent investigation, which focused on Uzbek workers on the Balkans, explored how many become vulnerable to exploitation.
The Uzbek Migration Agency lists Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Montenegro as the leading regional destinations for Uzbek migrant workers.
