A new analysis by the Institute for Market Economics (IME) finds no clear sign in the data that workers from outside the EU are pushing Bulgarians out of jobs or holding down pay.

Firms are looking for many workers, and the local pool of labour can hardly meet their needs alone, because regions and skills do not match. The Employment Agency expects 231,000 potential hires in the next 12 months. That is about 12% fewer than a year earlier, but far more than the number of workers available.

Registered unemployment in Bulgaria has stayed between 4% and 6% since mid-2021, or about 140,000 to 165,000 people. In the capital, Sofia, it has stayed below 2%. In Blagoevgrad region it is high, yet employers there still look for many workers. The IME says this means one of two things: either the skills and home towns of job seekers do not fit what firms need, or the conditions and pay do not attract applicants.

At the end of 2025, about 29,000 citizens of non-EU countries held a residence permit for work, Eurostat data show. That is almost five times the 2020 figure. The Employment Agency has issued 49,000 permits in all, and more than 18,000 of them are for seasonal work. Even on these figures, foreigners make up less than 2% of the 2.9m people in work in Bulgaria.

In 2025, the agency issued 18,658 permits for 90-day work to non-EU citizens. Most were in Burgas region, with 8,066, followed by Varna with 3,022. Hotels and restaurants had the highest demand.

Tourism around Burgas creates a strong seasonal peak in vacancies, so the region has the most seasonal workers. Even so, pay in the region rose faster than the national average in 2025, and employment has been recovering from its low during the pandemic.

The regional data do not show that seasonal workers push out local people, the IME says. The regions with the biggest share of foreigners hired this way are not those where employment fell most. At regional level there is also no link between the share of seasonal workers and pay growth. The institute says the trends in pay, unemployment and employment across regions largely disprove the claim that seasonal hiring clearly holds down employment and pay for Bulgarians.

In hotels and restaurants, pay rose by nearly 110% between 2020 and 2025. That is one of the fastest rises of any sector, but wages in the sector remain low.

The institute says the shortage needs different fixes in different regions and sectors. Bringing in local people who are not working is still important, but the available pool cannot be measured only by the number of unemployed or inactive people. Quite a few young people are inactive, but many of them are studying, while others face health, family or regional barriers to returning to the labour market. Hiring workers from outside the EU can be part of the answer, along with getting local people into work and training them.

The IME believes the labour shortage will probably grow, especially in the sectors and regions that already struggle to find workers. According to a forecast by the National Statistical Institute, the working-age population could fall from about 3.9m today to 3.1m in 2050.