Slovenia's joblessness continues at low levels with 48,353 people on the unemployment roll in December, 9% fewer than the same month a year ago despite a monthly increase of 2.5% typical for this time of year.

More people as a rule register with the Employment Service in December as their temporary job contracts expire, redundancies are registered and hiring slows.

Throughout 2023, 0.2% fewer people than the year before were newly registered for being out of a job and the number of those who found a job dropped by 10.3%.

Releasing fresh unemployment figures on 8 January, the Employment Service said it expected the jobless total to fall further this year, to about 47,000 at the end of the year, or down by 2.8% year-on-year.

In December, 5,187 were registered anew as unemployed, 3.9% more than in November and 2.5% more than a year ago.

Among those, 2,365 saw their fixed-term contracts expire, 1,329 were made redundant, 23 lost their job as their companies went bankrupt and 384 were first-time jobseekers.

Meanwhile, 2,306 persons found a job, 24.2% fewer than in November and 7% fewer than in December 2022.

Jobs were mostly available for sales clerks, secretaries, simple manufacturing workers, warehouse clerks, cleaners, servants and domestic helpers, helpers in hotels and other establishments, educators and assistant pre-school teachers, waiters, kitchen assistants and drivers.

Due to structural imbalances in the labour market, the Employment Service has been seeing a significant increase in applications for employment of foreigners since 2021.

Last year, the service issued 44,680 work permits and consents. Most foreigners come from Bosnia-Herzegovina. Data from October 2023 show foreign workers made up 14.4% of Slovenia's employed population.

The most recent available data for registered unemployment rate is for October, at 4.8%.

Meanwhile, the survey unemployment rate was at 4.2% in November, up 0.1 percentage points from the month before and 0.7 points higher year-on-year.

The Statistics Office estimates that around 44,000 people aged 15 to 74 were out of a job in November, 53% of whom were men and 47% women.