Since 2007, the Employment Service Agency of the Republic of Macedonia conducts, as a regular activity, survey research among employers for the purpose of the Skill Needs Analysis. For the first time, the Skill Needs Analysis was implemented as a pilot research in 2006 in the frame of the CARDS project Technical Assistance to Institution Building as a Support to Employment Policy (phase II) Component 2 „Further Upgrading the Capacity of the Employment Service Agency (ESA) and its Local Employment Offices”. The methodology of this analysis is based on a survey research according to Swedish model adjusted to the Macedonian circumstances. The main objective of the Skill Needs Analysis is to increase the knowledge about the situation and the expected changes on the labour market, by receiving information from employers regarding: • Need for recruitments in the next 6 to 12 months; • Need for occupations, with respect to the planned recruitments; • Need for skills that the candidates for the planned recruitments should possess; • Workforce demand which employers cannot meet, i.e. occupation shortage. The survey research is based on a sample of employers (stratified random sample) with 10 and more employees, and the selection of sample firms is made from the following eight activities: agriculture, hunting and forestry; manufacturing industry; construction; trade; hotels and restaurants; transport, storage and communications; financial intermediation; and real estate and services. The implementation of this survey comes once a year. The survey coveres only the firms in the private sector, i.e. the public sector is not included in the research. Skill Needs Analysis ensures relevant and very useful short-term indicators for employers’ expectations with respect to recruitments in the next twelve months in the Republic of Macedonia.

Result: The survey research contributes to increasing the knowledge and information about the situation and the expected changes on the labour market as well as to increasing the cooperation and trust between the employers and the Employment Service Agency. The results from this research are very important not only for the Employment Service Agency but also for the employers and the social partners on regional and local level.