OREANDA-NEWS. April 04, 2012. Prime Minister of Ukraine Mykola Azarov requires the Ministry of Social Policy to develop a national program to stimulate employment. Prime Minister gave the corresponding order during a meeting with vice Prime Minister - Minister of Social Policy Sergiy Tigipko.

Mykola Azarov expressed grave concern over disparities in the labor market. Currently, the number of employed people in Ukraine has equaled the number of pensioners. This demographic situation creates an excessive burden on the State budget and limits the Pension Fund.

However, almost 8 million persons of working age are economically inactive. This is a significant reserve in the labor market, which is unused for a number of reasons.

First of all, this is discrepancy of the training to the needs of a modern economy. 40% of graduating students are not arranged by specialty. On average, 8 people claimed for one job at the end of 2011 in Ukraine. However, there are thousands of unfilled vacancies of highly skilled engineering and working professionals.

Second, informal employment remains widespread, when the employer does not carry any social obligations as to the employees and to the state.

Thirdly, a notion of uncompetitive labor has appeared at the labor market. It is mainly young people aged 15-24 and people over 50 years. The unemployment rate in these categories is up to 20%.

"We need to develop a major government program to encourage the employment of our people. Moreover, the funds that we spend every year on it about 6 billion are very heavily. We could introduce systematic measures to stimulate employment," - Mykola Azarov said.

According to him, we can, for example, to introduce a single social tax reduction for employers that during the previous year consistently paid salaries that exceed three minimum wages. Employers, who will employ young people and those aged 50 years, can be compensated the cost of paying the unified social tax without limitation in the amount of wages.

In turn, Sergiy Tigipko said that the Ministry of Social Policy had already worked out 18 areas to stimulate employment. "We have developed 18 initiatives that encourage employers to create new jobs" - said vice Prime Minister.

He also noted that the Ministry has offers on incentives for small businesses. "We first propose to encourage small businesses with up to 50 jobs" - Sergiy Tigipko said. He also said that most unemployed citizen is in rural areas, and therefore the incentives will be distributed on local authorities.

The Prime Minister said that before submitting the draft state program to the Government we should spend its broad public discussion. "For all of these proposals: before to submit them to the Government we have to hold a broad public debate - with community organizations, employers, business and trade unions. We should discuss these issues at most", - Mykola Azarov said.

As Sergiy Tigipko assured, public discussion of initiatives of the Ministry of Social Policy starts from today. After that bill will be placed on the website of the Ministry and within a month everyone will be able to make proposals to the program to stimulate employment.