"To say this is it, we are moving ahead and we are increasing the minimum wage by 12.5% every year, is bringing us very soon to the Estonian scenario. There are some signs: Lithuania’s GDP is growing, and it is very likely that the GDP growth in the third quarter will rank first in the whole euro area, but if we look at productivity, GDP per worker, it has been falling for nearly three years now," Mačiulis told the Lithuanian Business Forum on Thursday.
According to the economist, the recent growth in GDP has been driven by a wave of immigration to Lithuania in the past few years. He said immigrants are getting jobs in a very narrow non-value-added sector that is not capable of creating a high-level economic prosperity.
"Immigrants have boosted GDP, but the value added by one immigrant is much less than the value added by those already here. 70% of immigrants have taken up jobs as drivers and couriers – it all was needed. They took up the vacancies, generating higher GDP, but that is not the basis for long-term prosperity. One will not create a prosperous Lithuania through immigration of unskilled labourforce," he explained.
The Employment Service has estimated 138.3 thousand third-country nationals from 132 countries were employed in Lithuania on 1 July 2024. The number rose by 20.4 thousand over a year. Two thirds of them were Belarusians and Ukrainians, more than 6,000 were Uzbek nationals, Kyrgyz and Tajik workers made up 5,600 and 4,600 respectively.