Macedonian Parliament proposed changes to the country’s employment and unemployment insurance laws. Leaders also discussed retirement and invalidity insurance and healthcare insurance. The proposed changes are part of the Employing Macedonia 2 package, which will provide significant tax cuts to companies that employ people from vulnerable categories. The initial law calls for waiving hefty retirement and healthcare taxes on individual salaries for up to five years, if a company hires young, inexperienced workers, elderly workers, or single parents, long-term unemployed workers and other categories that have high unemployment rates. About 19,000 new jobs were created in the first year that the program was introduced.
