Social dialogue and the new world of work: The case of the Baltic state

Abstract

In the second half of the 2010s, the labour markets in the Baltic countries, as in many other central and eastern European countries, were fairly tight (see Table 17.1). Unemployment rates recovered from the Great Recession and by 2019 had fallen to comparatively low levels, with 6.4 per cent in Lithuania, 6.3 per cent Latvia and 5.4 per cent in Estonia (in 2018) (Eurostat 2021b). The employment rate increased during the 2010s and the working-age population decreased. The main reason for the increase in the employment rate was the demand for labour owing to the growth of economic activity in general: GDP increased by almost one-third between 2010 and 2019. Rapid wage increases brought more people into the labour market, as did social security retrenchment, with changes in the rules on ability to work and increases in the pension age in Estonia. In Estonia in the second half of the 2010s rising employment was caused by the increase in youth employment, whereas previously it was because of rising employment among the older population. The share of students who work regularly increased from 40 per cent to 53 per cent between 2012 and 2017 (Haaristo et al. 2017). Similarly, in Latvia the employment rate reached a historical high: 65 per cent of the population aged 15-74 years were employed in the third quarter of 2018. The economic activity rate also reached its highest level, at 70.2 per cent (Ekonomikas Ministrija 2019). An important consequence of rising employment rates, despite the decreasing working-age population and unemployment, is that the potential for attracting labour from the economically inactive population is almost exhausted. Continued economic growth in combination with unsatisfactory demographic

The Determinants of Internet User Skills in Europe

“…There is therefore a positive relationship between digital literacy and the ability to conclude digital deals and in this relationship an important role is played by the training of human capital in the use of IT and internet tools. [4] consider the issue of digital culture and digitization in general in the Baltic countries, underlining how, especially Estonia, has managed to obtain significant advantages in terms of digitization by reaching the standards of European countries -and in some cases even exceeding the average level of EU28 countries. The use of the internet and the acquisition of internet skills is also a requirement for optimizing the use of public data.…”