The biggest manipulation by the government and businessmen is that workers are not productive!

Interview for Nezavisen.mk

According to the latest information from the State Statistical Office on the number of employees in the industry, which is decreasing.

Why is this so, what is the reason for this trend and how concerned should we be as a country?

The data is very worrying, and the very fact that 374,045 workers or 73.3% of workers received a salary below the average salary, and 169,082 workers, or 1/3 or 33.1% of workers receive a salary below 30,000 denars or below 500 euros shows that the level of the salary may be the biggest reason why the Macedonian worker does not see his future in Macedonia and in the Macedonian economy and perhaps this is the biggest reason for the decline in the number of employees in the economy who, instead of building the domestic economy, go abroad and build some foreign economies.

The decline in the total number of employees is even more worrying if we look at the PRO data provided by the SSM, which show that in July 2024, 532,292 workers received a salary, and in May 2025, 509,960 workers received a salary, which only confirms the bad picture of the labor market, so if this trend of bad policies for low wages continues, then the danger is even greater, because everyone who left Macedonia for a better-paid job and a higher salary has never returned.

Employers in the economy are equally guilty, if not more, for this situation because they still underestimate the labor of the Macedonian worker, do not pay him enough, do not give him a stable employment relationship for an indefinite period, so they should directly take responsibility not only for the last year but also for the last 30 years, because they brought the country to this state.

What is the Government (not) doing and what should it do to stop this trend?

Not only the Government, but also employers in the private sector or the economy should act together and instead of supporting each other in their intentions not to increase the minimum wage and not to increase other wages, they should start removing one by one the reasons for such a dangerous trend because the time has come when if you want to keep a worker, you will have to offer him real conditions, a high salary, and not just empty promises, the time has come when businessmen thought that the worker would work for them for a low salary, and if he is not easily replaceable.

As SSM, we continuously point out that the first step that should be taken is to increase the wages of workers, and consequently to create measures to support employers who are faced with certain challenges.

The Government says that they should grow with the loud growth of productivity. Given that they boasted about the growth of industrial production, and there are fewer employees in the industry, does this show that productivity has increased and if so, is it not a sufficient argument for increasing wages?

There are too many arguments for increasing wages, and that is one more argument, but as if it is not very important to the Government.

With the trend of reducing the number of employees in Macedonia, the trend of the exodus of the workforce from Macedonia, today one worker in the private sector does the work of two or three workers, is as productive as two or three workers, creates profit for businessmen as if they were working for two or three workers because the volume of work with the reduction in the number of employees has not decreased, but on the contrary has increased, but the salary of that one worker has not doubled or tripled.

The biggest manipulation of the Government and businessmen is that workers are not productive, because when they talk about productivity, they always talk as if only workers create it, and this is not the case. Investments in new technologies, in digitalization and automation, investments in advanced technology, machines and tools are the main drivers of productivity, and workers are as productive as they are paid.

For those wages, they are even too productive, so the Government and businessmen can imagine how much productivity will increase if they increase workers' wages.

But, that is obviously not their goal, their goal is to use the excuse of low productivity to ensure that there are almost no wage increases in the coming period, but workers measure productivity differently from how they measure it in the Government and how employers measure it, workers measure their productivity by seeing how much profit, cars, houses, vacations and other luxuries they have made possible for the bosses with their labor, that is, they measure their productivity when they see how about 1,000 officials and about 65,000 company owners enjoy themselves on the backs of workers and from the sweat of workers.

The worker puts in his or her effort to earn his or her salary, to earn for his or her employer, and to earn for the employees, and he or she often wonders how productive the employees are with a 79% increase in salaries, how productive are business owners and whether they blame the worker for their almost nonexistent productivity.