The Analysis of Labour Productivity in East European Countries

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the productivity or efficiency of the new European Union (EU) states, with emphasis on Estonia; and to compare them on the EU level. Industry, construction, trade and transport in Estonia have been viewed separately. Labour market problems in Eastern European countries have become more and more important. When the EU labour markets opened, some EU countries were forced to face the problem of partial workforce drain to richer countries with higher wages. In addition, on the one hand, East European countries have quite high unemployment rates, and on the other, many vacant jobs ? there is a lack of qualified workforce. Low salaries, among other reasons, force many people to go to work in rich countries, where wages are several times higher. A number of proposals to increase labour productivity for both workers and entrepreneurs have been listed in the summary.