Survey: 40% of Estonian employers preparing to increase wages
40% of employers in Estonia intend to increase their employees' wage levels, while 39% are planning on creating new positions and 70% intend to hire new employees to replace outgoing workers and fill temporary or new positions, it appears from a survey conducted by recruitment portal CVKeskus.ee and the Salary Information Agency.
"40% of employers are planning to raise their employees' basic salaries, which is indicative of the wage pressures resulting from the shortage of labour that employers are trying to adapt to," Henry Auväärt, chief of communications at CVKeskus.ee, said in a press release. "Meanwhile, we can see the first signs of moderation in wage growth — last autumn, the respondents included more organisations where basic salaries had risen in the previous months as well as those where it was intended to happen in the near future."
According to Auväärt, among all responding employers, 18% intend to increase the basic salaries of all of their employees in the near future. "In the other companies who participated in the survey, intended wage growth concerns certain groups of employees or individual workers," he said. "The planned growth generally remains within 5-6%."
In total, 37% of employers are not planning to change the wages of their employees in the near term, 23% have not yet made up their mind and 0.2% are planning to cut wages instead, but that concerns only individual employees.
Kadri Seeder, director of and analyst at the Salary Information Agency, said that there are many more organisations that increased their employees' basic salaries than there were those intending to do so six months ago, adding that basic salaries had increased first and foremost in companies experiencing staff shortages.
"In addition to basic salaries, many organisations have in recent years changed their systems for additional remuneration and benefits," she noted.
Within the next six months, 70% of employers are planning on hiring new employees, and 39% intend to create new positions. According to Auväärt, specialists are currently most sought after — half of the businesses looking to recruit new employees intend to hire specialists.
"33% of employers plan to hire skilled personnel, 27% unskilled workers and 23% customer service personnel," he said. "The need for general office clerks is currently the lowest."
-
Download the ERR News app for Android and iOS now and never miss an update!
Editor: Aili Vahtla
