New labour in Serbia: Foreign workers are the solution after all

When Romania joined the EU in 2007, tent settlements of Romanian nationals stood just on this side of the border for some time. They came for the modest daily wage they earned as temporary seasonal workers, usually fruit pickers. It didn’t last long – Romania subsequently made rapid progress, and membership in the Brussels club opened up better prospects – but let it be recorded that, at one point in time, citizens of the European Union made up a significant portion of guest workers in Serbia.

Today, if Romanians were present in the numbers they once were, they would face fierce competition on the (temporary?) job market. According to data from the National Employment Service, the threshold of 100,000 officially registered foreign workers was crossed in 2025. Whether Serbia was their intended destination or they ended up stuck halfway on the road to Germany, local guest workers aren’t complaining. Above all, they are satisfied with how the community treats them; they miss their families, and as for their earnings, they politely refrain from mentioning them.

A foreign worker’s approximate income in Serbia should be calculated between €500 and €700. For their compatriots lucky enough to secure employment in a Central or Western European country, that amount might hardly seem worth the effort, and even for a Serbian worker, it’s nothing extraordinary. However, compared to what they could count on in their home countries – and especially compared to what they could send back to their presumably large families – it represents a quantum financial leap.

Unfair competition amid shortages

For the local economy, at least at first glance, this is a godsend that relieves businesses of the worry of sourcing (mostly low-skilled) labour, with the added benefit of lower wages and social security contributions than would be required when hiring local workers. Because such win-win situations are rare in economics, the reverse side of the coin is presented by the trade unions, confirming that some things in capitalism haven’t changed since the days of Marx and Engels:

“The powerful lobby of the business world is tailoring rules where their only concern is to cut costs as much as possible. Labour is arriving from markets where a salary of €500–€600 is a pipe dream,” complained Duško Vuković from the Confederation of Autonomous Trade Unions of Serbia recently, noting that this constitutes not only unfair competition for employees in Serbia, but also a practice that harms domestic workers and negatively affects unemployment reduction.

Čedanka Andrić, president of the Nezavisnost trade union, was even more direct, pointing out that the state and employers are consciously using foreign workers to drive down the price of labour in Serbia:

“If our worker asks for €800 because he can’t feed his family on €500, the employer tells him: ‘You don’t have to stay; I’ll bring in three people from Asia who will work for that money and sleep in a shipping container,’ which directly drives our young people out of the country.”

While trade unions have practical objections to hiring foreign workers, economists’ criticisms are more theoretical. In that regard, one key argument stands out: importing foreign labor leads the domestic economy to focus on maintaining low operating costs instead of pursuing technological development and wage increases. Goran Radosavljević, professor of economics at the FEFA Faculty in Belgrade, notes:

“Bringing in workers from abroad who are willing to work for minimum wage and in poor conditions disincentivises local employers from investing in automation, modernisation, and boosting productivity. Instead of striving for high value-added jobs, we are cementing our position as a low-cost labour economy.”

Opportunism as a labour market norm

It is certain that the novel situation Serbia now faces has already been experienced by developed European nations. The phenomenon of foreign workers is by no means new to Serbia, though for decades it was viewed from the opposite angle – from the perspective of the employees rather than the employers.

The simple lesson is that the labour market, like any other, is driven by opportunism. The old, dull truth remains that capital is like water: it flows where resistance is lowest. In other words, an employer will almost always choose to save money by hiring a worker who can be paid less, without considering long-term macroeconomic benefits such as raising overall technological capabilities and how that will impact gross domestic product.

Naturally, all of this could be altered by administrative intervention from the state, but as experience shows, once the government steps in, we are no longer really talking about a free market, and the rules of the game change.

There is another argument less frequently mentioned because it inadvertently reinforces stereotypes of innate conformism or even laziness among the local populace, summed up in the famous local saying: “Better to sit for free than to work for free.” Nebojša Atanacković, honorary president of the Serbian Association of Employers, presents that side of the coin, arguing that the claim of unfair competition from foreign workers holds no water because these are jobs local workers simply do not want:

“It isn’t about driving down wages; it’s about a physical absence of workers. Our people don’t want to work on construction sites in 40-degree heat or drive buses for the wages we can realistically afford to pay. Without foreigners, many companies would shut up shop, and then nobody would have a job – neither local nor foreign workers.”

A United Nations on the construction site

Foreign workers in Serbia have become an economic necessity, just as they did in Western Europe several decades ago. While society might manage without home food delivery services, major capital infrastructure projects – such as motorways, residential developments, and the Expo – would ground to a complete halt due to a lack of labour. Without imports, there would be no one to drive this growth. The operations of large supermarket chains and public transport in major cities depend directly on foreign staff.

Looking at the demographic makeup of immigrants in Serbia, the largest group undeniably comes from the Russian Federation. Their arrival over the past four years makes it harder to draw clear conclusions about general immigration trends. However, Russian settlers do not really belong in this debate: firstly, their presence is primarily driven by political rather than economic reasons, and secondly, they represent an atypical social group consisting mainly of skilled professionals in IT, finance, marketing, consulting, architecture, and entrepreneurship.

In second place are the ubiquitous Chinese nationals, who should be divided into two distinct groups representing very different waves of migration. The first wave, at the turn of the 21st century, consisted of the Chinese citizens whom most people in Serbia remember for their department stores. They arrived mostly as independent entrepreneurs or family members engaged in import and retail, concentrating in Belgrade (particularly Block 70), Novi Sad, Niš, and other major cities. The number of formally employed staff was relatively small, as many worked in their own shops or family businesses. By the early 2010s, Chinese nationals already constituted the largest single group of foreigners issued work permits in Serbia.

The second Chinese wave began around 2016-2017 and is entirely different. It is tied to major Chinese infrastructure projects: railways, motorways, bridges, mines, and industrial giants like the Smederevo Steel Mill and the Bor copper mine. During this period, engineers, managers, and technicians arrived alongside large numbers of construction and industrial workers assigned to specific projects.

This second wave is tied to concrete ventures; workers stay for a few months or years before moving on to another project, meaning their stay is strictly temporary. In contrast, the first-wave immigrants – traders and their families – have been permanently settled in Serbia since the late 1990s. Thus, saying that around 10,000 Chinese nationals work in Serbia refers not to a single unified community, but to a blend of a long-established merchant diaspora and a newer, large-scale project workforce engaged in Chinese investments.

Among other foreign workers – who remain significantly fewer in number than the Chinese – there is a notable presence of workers from India, Turkey, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. They are predominantly employed in construction, manufacturing, logistics, courier services, industrial production, hospitality, and transport.

Interestingly, the profile of foreign workers in Serbia differs from that seen in many Western European countries. While migrants there are predominantly employed in the service sector (caregiving, cleaning, catering), the vast majority of foreign workers in Serbia remain engaged in construction and industrial production, reflecting the structure of the local economy and its most acute labour shortages.

Current demographic trends show developed European countries absorbing educated populations from less developed European nations, as these individuals can integrate more easily into relatively similar European societies. This process affects Serbia as well as other countries in the region. The situation is illustrated by statistics showing that developed nations like Germany record population growth despite well-known declines in their native birth rates.

In this context, the origin of immigration is far from irrelevant. A Croatian sports commentator framed this issue in his own unique way, remarking that within two years there would be 400,000 Nepalese people in Croatia, causing the national football team to lose its aerial dominance – an allusion to the shorter average height of residents from the Himalayan nation. The comment subsequently forced the Croatian broadcaster to issue an apology to viewers.

In Serbia, considerable unease was triggered by reports that plans were underway at the state level to bring in 100,000 workers from Ghana. The story was officially denied; the misinformation stemmed from actual negotiations between Serbia and Ghana regarding labour mobility agreements that would enable employment opportunities for a segment of the young population from that African nation.

State officials have been quite candid about their preferences regarding the origin of foreign workers. Danijel Igrec, Assistant Minister of Labour and Employment, openly expressed a preference for Uzbekistan during a television appearance. Discussing a labour mobility agreement Serbia is preparing with the country, he stated that it is:

“…a nation of exceptionally hard-working people who, when they go abroad to work, respect the social order, culture, and customs… and before sending its workers abroad, provides them with training to learn the language of their destination country.”

The influx of foreign workers – in Serbia’s case, primarily from Asian countries – is part of a process that history will one day view as far more significant than it appears to us today. It is the consequence of negative demographic trends across Europe that have hit Serbia as well. In time, this will lead to states with increasingly diverse populations, bringing unforeseen consequences that are impossible to calculate today. European societies find themselves in a position similar to the one described 120 years ago by the Greek poet C. P. Cavafy in his poem Waiting for the Barbarians. A weary European society waited calmly for the arrival of the barbarians who, in Cavafy’s poem, never arrived.

“Because those people were a kind of solution.”

A ten-year overview

Between 2014 and 2024, a total of 167,244 foreign nationals immigrated to the Republic of Serbia, while 72,512 foreigners emigrated from the country during the same period. This resulted in a net positive migration figure of 94,732 foreign citizens.

Broken down by gender for the 2014–2024 period, men accounted for 66.1 per cent of the total number of foreign immigrants, while women made up 33.9 per cent. Among the foreign nationals who emigrated from Serbia during the same timeframe, men represented 74.2 per cent and women 25.8 per cent.
Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia

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