Over Last Decade, 25k People Have Permanently Left Serbia Each Year

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For more than a decade, over 25,000 people have permanently left Serbia each year, says a recent study titled “The Mobility of Serbia’s Workforce,” conducted by the Institute for Development and Innovation.

While Serbian citizens mostly head to Germany and the U.S, Serbia has, in the first seven months of this year, issued around 50,000 work permits to foreigners, predominantly from China, Russia and Turkey.

According to Institute director Nenad Jevtovic, compared to 2008, Serbia’s current work market is immeasurably better. “Then, we had nearly one million unemployed, while now the number is 296,000 – many of whom are temporarily unemployed, i.e. between jobs,” Jevtovic explained.

These statistics are foremost the result of global economic trends and the fact that Serbia “has been war-free for 25 years,” Jevtovic stated, adding that, therefore, “one has to be seriously untalented for economic policy to not achieve improvement.”