After creating nearly 1.000 new jobs through different State support programmes during the month of January, the Ministry of Social Affairs declared its goal of creating up to 10.000 new jobs by the end of 2010.

The Estonian Minister of Social Affairs, Mr. Hanno Pevkur, explained that the success witnessed during the month of July is the result of the combination of three different measures that, if better implemented, could help the national labor market to start absorbing the rising number of unemployed people.

The first of these three measures consists in the creation of more traineeship opportunities, positions that are financially backed by the State. Getting  in line with what already happens in the rest of European Union, Estonian companies started to use the opportunity of hiring short-term trainees always more, moving from the 631 people in 2008 to the almost 1500 in 2009.

January 2010 started then with already some 345 new trainees, showing that the increase witnessed during the past years should be confirmed also during this year.

Besides the use of trainees, according to Pevkur companies benefitted also of the wage support programme and so of the fact that the State pays part of the salaries of newly employed people. The use of this possibility increased significantly overtime since, from the 71 jobs created within this framework in 2008, we move to the 427 created only during the first month of  2010.

A key role is then the one covered by grants awarded to potentially successful start-ups; if 162 people managed to get financial help for realizing their projects, 2008 saw 510 people participating to the same framework and 115 jobs created during January 2010 thanks to financial aids from the State.

The direction suggested by Minister Pevkur seems to be a constant commitment of the State into the economy on the form of subsidies and financial support to entrepreneurs able to create job opportunities in the country. Someone would say it could be a modification of the wild ruling of the market economy over anything else with the injection of a socialist corrective – but this is obviously a story that not many are ready to discuss yet.