employment

In late June the Lithuanian Parliament adopted a law that consolidated the employer and employee base for social security contributions and significantly cut the rate of contributions.

LFMI launches Employment Flexibility Index 2018 for the EU and OECD. The index is based on the World Bank’s Doing Business data on labor market regulation and covers a set of indicators on hiring, working hours, redundancy rules, and redundancy costs.

Since the great expansion of the EU in 2004, we are constantly hearing concerns about so-called social dumping from hard-core, traditional EU members. What at first seems to be an action against imminent threats to social standards in Western Europe is in fact a sophisticated instrument to eliminate competition from new EU members.

If a person works, strives and believes in being primarily responsible for his/her own destiny and not someone else, if that individual plans own finances, saves up and at least tries to escape from the “from pay to pay” circle - such a person is considered as the middle class or has all the potential to become it.

A robot called Baxter truly exists. It takes him one hour to learn simple repetitive movements and then it is able to repeat them with objects which weight no more than 10 kilograms. Baxter costs 22 thousand US dollars. It is less than work costs of one employee with average salary in Slovakia for two years.

Walter Krämer, a professor of statistics, found out that the OECD had produced the statistical nonsense of the month: According to a recent study published in May 2015 the topmost 10% of all German employees earn 6.6 times more than the undermost 10%.

From 2012 to 2014 Lithuania increased its minimum monthly wage by almost one third (from 800 Litas in 2012 to 1,035 Litas in 2014). There are suggestions to increase the minimum wage in 2015 even more the supporters of the idea claim that companies would adapt. But is it all that simple? According to the survey conducted by LFMI, minimum wage increases come at a cost and they eventually bring several negative consequences.

Slovak Labour Code that requires separation of the meal contribution for an employee from the salary of the employee created an artificial meal voucher market and ensured the voucher companies millions in revenue and generous profit margins, which are, at the end of the day, paid by the majority of workers, employers and restaurateurs in Slovakia.

The Bank of England has not changed its policy, but surprisingly our brothers, Czechs, entered currency wars. Although CNB decided to keep interest rates unchanged, it has decided on interventions on the foreign exchange market that weaken the koruna, so the exchange rate of the koruna against the euro is held close to CZK 27.

Finland is one of the European countries with the fastest-aging society. According to the Eurostat data