The two major groups representing employers and employees in Estonia on Monday struck an agreement on the minimum wage for 2023, which will be set at €725 per month gross, a rise of €71 per month on this year's figure.
Minister of Health and Labor Peep Peterson (SDE) plans to increase unemployment insurance contributions by 0.2 percentage points for employees and 0.1 percentage points for employers in order to replenish the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund's reserve, which was drained by about €300 million, or one third, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to the newly published results of an assessment of Estonia's nationwide work ability reform commissioned by the Ministry of Social Affairs, 61 percent of people with an officially determined partial ability to work were employed in 2020, exceeding the reform's goal of bringing half of people with a partial ability to work to the labor market.
State officials met more with private sector lobbyists than those from any other sector, over the past year, according to data whose collection the justice ministry made mandatory from last March.
Several employer, industry and commerce associations on Monday issued a joint statement in support of amendments to the Aliens Act proposed by Estonia's interior and entrepreneurship ministers and urging lawmakers to pass them quickly. The bill includes changes that would affect the short-time employment of both Ukrainians who had already been working in Estonia as well as arriving war refugees.