Current Unemployment and Social Work Introduction

As one of the most pressing problems of contemporary global society, we can describe unemployment as such. The international community (UN) on 10 December 1948 committed to respecting every person's right to work, free choice of occupation, fair and satisfying working conditions, and protection from unemployment. Everyone who works has the right to fair and satisfactory remuneration, which ensures a standard of living consistent with human dignity, and if necessary this is supplemented by other social-protection means. At the same time, each of us has a duty toward society, in which only then can we freely and fully develop our personalities.

Social work also fulfills duties toward society, promoting social development and social cohesion in society. The mission of social work is to support people in their efforts to maintain a dignified life permanently. Social work uses shared theories and knowledge with respect for local needs. Principles of human rights, common responsibility, and social justice are used in social-work practice. The international community, in Convention No. 122 on Employment Policy adopted by the International Labour Organization (ILO) in 1964, committed itself to ensuring that each country has its own instruments for providing sufficient work, while respecting freedom of choice and without any discrimination. Despite this, unemployment today has become a top-priority social problem.

The importance of work for human life is indisputable because it is an inseparable part of it. Work, by its nature, stimulates the development of both the individual and society. Work is deeply rooted in our culture, both in social organization and in the human psyche. It is a basic social fact that creates modern society and is the source of its dynamism.

Unemployment has a major impact on the social life of unemployed people. It is not only a decline in living standards linked to lower income, but also profound consequences of unemployment for daily life, social relationships, values, and social institutions.

People cope with unemployment in different ways, and the unpleasant personal life situation that arises can become dead-end; yet it should be addressed quickly, professionally, and well. The routes to solutions lie primarily in active and thorough regional employment policy.

Unemployment is not a new phenomenon in the context of social work. It is part of today’s world, and it is not possible to imagine it will cease to be part of human life regardless of education, work experience, abilities, status, age, or gender. It also seems to be a permanent condition with which society must cope differently, rather than merely trying to offset temporary fluctuations, since what matters is its mitigation and removal.

A challenge for every unemployed person could also be that their status need not be only suffering. It can be a chance to change their previous way of life—even in small everyday details—to reorganize life rhythm so that one feels better, and controls one’s own life rather than work, which can be lost at any time.

Even slowing down can be active. On one hand, unemployment means fewer routine activities and the narrowing of social networks. A person is nonetheless a social being and needs friends even when not employed. The time previously devoted to paid work can be used to build new contacts, improve skills, improve health, or change an over-hurried life style. In other words, unemployment can also be used as an opportunity to make changes (lifestyle), gain something (new contacts), strengthen something (health), and improve something (education).

According to public opinion research, unemployment threat and unemployment itself are identified as the heaviest subjective problem for people. In its essence, unemployment is unnatural and artificial. The reason lies in outdated understanding of socially accepted work and employment. Conventional economic understandings of work provide neither solution nor an exit from the problem today. Unemployment, often long-term and recurring, turns into a standard life situation with all the negative effects on a person’s social situation. Social work itself must therefore reassess its previous view of unemployment and of the phenomenon of “insufficient work.”

Unemployment as a social problem primarily affects the unemployed person directly. Unemployment does not mean the person is without work and enjoying “pleasant idleness.” Unemployment brings poverty and a lack of means for a dignified life in a market economy society. As we understand unemployment today, it emerges from an insufficient amount of profit-making work. If people were previously employed, their work had been oriented exclusively to profit generation for employers rather than to securing life necessities for employees. Their current poverty and insecurity in meeting basic needs were not, and are not, the economy’s primary problem as we presently conceive it.

Solving unemployment is not a business (or economy/business) problem. If we accept the fact that profit generation has no direct link to social development and public services, unemployment is not a problem for entrepreneurship. Yet business is a generator of unemployment because it pursues as its primary goal the achievement of maximum profit, even through reducing staff numbers. Redundant employees do not represent a problem for business; rather, a high number of unemployed often creates a “positive” pressure to lower wages for those currently employed and generates willingness to work even for undignified pay. Thus, unemployment can be assessed as a plus for business because it keeps wages at a minimum level. Ironically, some unemployed themselves sometimes demand abolition of minimum wage thresholds because they are convinced this is the cause of limited job opportunities.

Unemployment can also be understood as positive for another reason. It is the result of economic and technological progress. Its consequence is that it is no longer necessary to work solely to secure simple reproduction or survival, but that people can work for the benefit of society, not only for additional simplistic profit. Unfortunately, when additional profit cannot be increased now, the current system finds no place for people and dismisses them as surplus labour without moral concerns, treating it as a rational procedure.

Unemployment also exerts pressure on the present form of the state. Non-working people do not pass on part of earned resources for state functioning and the social system because they are not paid the needed source of income and therefore have nothing to contribute. Often they are also encouraged not to pay contributions. Unemployment means social instability, which can become chaos and social tension if core state functions are disrupted. The state (organized society) authorized owners of means of production to organize the work system. The work system still functions on the principle that only profit-producing work is desirable. Other work done for society’s benefit is often undesirable and financially undervalued, often also morally undervalued. The state is itself dependent on surpluses remaining after resources for survival (through taxes, contributions, and so on) are secured and consumed. States, in their own words, call unemployment an unavoidable objective side effect of economic growth. Government programs regularly demand and promise economic revival, higher growth, and sustainable growth, perceived mainly as ever-increasing gross domestic product. Only sustained growth, they argue, can heal unemployment. Effort to raise growth as a route to lowering unemployment is thought, according to prevailing doctrines, to inevitably increase opportunities for work. Europe adopted a similar growth program to 2020, which occasionally refers to inclusive growth, but mainly places endless economic growth first. Economic growth does not eliminate unemployment; rather, it increases it. The more it calls for sustainable growth, the more poverty deepens and unemployment rises.

Currently, the share of non-standard work is rising, as is the belief in the irreversibility of and the impossibility of a return to full employment, even if politicians do not admit it publicly. Parametric changes cannot alter the condition; at best they can temporarily ease it. Work that is not full-time, compulsory vacations, division of job positions, flexible work forms, forced withdrawal from the labour market (with ageism as a telltale sign), early retirement, endless retraining, forced return of migrant workers, and other new tools and “flexibilizations” will not reverse this trend. Recipients of future benefits are being asked to work longer and to contribute higher contributions. A changing share of the economically active population (ageing) prevents balancing income and expenditure. Population ageing is caused by a demographic revolution brought about by changing fertility. Private pension savings systems do not have the character of insurance and guarantee nothing. Because of their speculative nature, they are not, in terms of the ILO, pension systems based on insurance; they lack the insurance character. In optimum conditions these systems eventually become pay-as-you-go systems, which they were meant to replace. Therefore they cannot in any way prevent the effects of population ageing. Their essence is the privatization of old age and an unmasked desire for control over much of society’s financial resources. The number of contributors decreases and contribution levels fall, and as a result the state’s maneuvering room for social policy is limited. If I am in a car accident, I receive compensation if I am insured. In the insurable event of growing old, I most likely receive nothing; thus one cannot speak of private old-age systems as insurable, since they do not provide security in the way of classic insurance (Hetteš, 2011).

Commonly recommended and implemented parametric measures are generally unable to solve permanently the shortage of meaningful, dignified work. Those measures are usually such as, for example:

  1. Improving information on available jobs and on the available labour force. First there were local, later national, and now international labour-market instruments, such as the European Employment Services network, EURES. Increase the effectiveness of employment agency operations. - Improve vocational preparation and better connect educational systems to the needs of practice. - Introduce tools, measures, and active labor-market programs with special emphasis on selected population groups and/or selected regions.

In general, it is forgotten that the number of available jobs is far lower than the available labour force. Even perfect alignment of educational curricula with economic needs will not solve unemployment. All member states of the OECD, in the name of their governments, have recognized the need to increase attention to unemployment solutions. In general, it is recommended to reduce social benefits to increase the incentive to work, “to make it worth while to work,” and to free people from the “poverty trap.” That recommendation does not create new job opportunities. In case of current lack of opportunities, this measure has no effect. Only “effective” were measures that tightened unemployment benefit eligibility requirements, which subsequently moved their recipients into the category of social-assistance recipients.

The social attitudes of Western Europe toward non-working people changed with the financial crisis. Before the crisis, the dominant view was that these were people who did not want to work and lived at society’s expense from supposedly generous social benefits. Some attempts in Slovakia to reduce these “generous” benefits proved unworkable at their current low levels. The crisis forcibly pushed most unemployed out of the labor market—people who would have liked to work. For example, real exit from the labor market in Slovakia is about five years earlier than law prescribes. Extremely low statutory minimum wages are demotivating. Paradoxically, a subjective feeling arose that further lowering remuneration is an appropriate instrument to improve employment. The very high surplus of labor supply with no work does not support expectations of higher pay and consequent increase in purchasing power and the start of internal demand. The problem in Slovak society is that a large gap persists between economic strength measured by GDP per capita and undervalued labor force. Slovakia remains a country where economic growth does not correspond to social development. Most of the population does not benefit from economic growth. Solidarity declines both among people and between regions. (Hetteš, 2013 (b))

The growth of precarious work is merely the result of imperfect unemployment resolution and is evidence of weakening the position of indefinite full-time employment. The current understanding of employment creates an irreversible situation that prevents a return to full employment. Society today must accept the expansion of non-standard work and accept unemployment as a subjective but not blameworthy standard life situation for individuals.

The former form of work functioned as the main integrator of society, enabling cooperation and coexistence in an individualized society. It was a society where employment had the purpose of creating profit for the entrepreneur and of providing resources for employees’ livelihood. If we view work or employment as the means that ensures the functioning of society and its very existence and reproduction (most populations are now declining), we get a different picture in which unemployment does not exist. The former approach does not allow full employment. A changed approach and view of what meaningful work is would remove this problem. A society that recognizes as work also activities that are not for profit resolves unemployment. Work that is not for profit is also useful work. People performing it are not lazy or useless. Economic and technical development has removed the necessity to work eight hours a day for a wage. Yet people still retain the need to contribute to social well-being. The right to work can today be interpreted as the right to the free use of time.

Human needs and desires usually exceed capacities. Resources are limited, so it is reasonable to strive for sustainable dignified living. Sustained economic growth is utopian and nonsensical from the perspective of the Earth's finitude. Humanity currently creates sufficient means to secure the lives of all people on Earth. We live in a time when we can state that the main economic problem (physical survival) has been solved. Unemployment, like ageing, are positive and not alarming phenomena. Both demonstrate progress, human success, not crisis. Liberation from the necessity of working for survival does not mean ceasing to work. Current unemployment is not an illness and so there are no conventional medicines for treating it. Unemployment is the result of productivity success, which requires ever fewer workers. We are still far from claiming that all human desires are fulfilled, pains eliminated, and needs for services, love, care, and self-realization have gone away. Gutenberg’s invention deprived many monks of their work. Did monastic vocations then lose meaning? Gutenberg’s invention enabled mass printing of books and caused an information explosion in Europe. The agricultural revolution meant few people now cultivate food, yet we still consume it.

Wage work is a modern form of slavery. People want to and will work even when they are not fundamentally dependent on wages. The International Labour Organization (ILO) adopted Recommendation No. 202/2012 on the right to minimum social protection. It is a right, not an option. The old maxim that those who do not work should not eat now applies in another form. Someone who works not for profit has the right—perhaps even greater right—to recognition. Informal care for loved ones who are dependent and in need is socially more beneficial than institutionalized care, perhaps. A lot of financially remunerated and socially lamentably accepted “work” consists of producing weapons, addictive substances, pollutants, meaningless entertainment, and the like. Many things we are forced to produce so we can survive provide no good and are in fact directly destructive of what we believe in. In a society that produces enough and with surplus, unemployment should mean shorter working time and more attention to needs that are currently underdeveloped. Do we have time for children, parents, or ourselves? Recent Chinese court rulings, where adult children neglected their parents, were justified by a lack of time due to the necessity of earning for survival. Is it different in Slovakia? Older people in Slovakia are among the most abandoned in the EU. One reason for low fertility in Slovakia is a lack of financial means and time. What are the priorities of a society that cannot maintain its own self-reproduction?

A prophecy of the original inhabitants of America from the Kiowa tribe says: “Only when the last tree is cut down. Only when the last river is polluted. Only when the last fish is caught. Only then will you realize that money cannot be eaten.” Other Native Americans from the Pacific Northwest valued people who knew history, could make things, could teach, and pitied those who had material property. Increases in material wealth do not correspond to increases in happiness.

John Maynard Keynes, in his 1930 essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, left a message to his grandsons in the form that love of money as property—and distinct from love of money as a means for life—would be seen as something disgusting and semi-pathological, almost a mental illness. Those grandsons are already here, and so is an era in which money should be understood this way. Keynes was also the first to distinguish work needed for physical survival from the second type needed to fulfill life. Economics, as a science, should according to him concern only the first type of work (activity to secure physical survival). As progress grows, work for survival becomes less and less important, and economics/entrepreneurship likewise becomes less and less important. Fulfillment in life, rather than accumulation of money, takes the central place. Therefore, speaking of unemployment and solving it through further production is meaningless.

Unemployment and poverty are the result of unjust distribution of shared welfare. They are not caused by shortage, but by distribution. It is the shame of today’s society that hunger and poverty exist in the Third World. Hunger and poverty have always existed, but the difference is that today we have enough resources to remove them. Only 150 years ago, the poorer half of the population of today’s developed world lived under conditions comparable to those in the Third World. Work to obtain food was the main occupation and people worked 60 hours weekly. If someone needed a doctor, another family member got less food. My grandmother in Slovakia, still in the 1930s, considered whether to give my father—then a child—a chance of survival by paying 5 Kčs for an injection and cutting the other four children from food or winter clothing. Is this still true today? The problem of unemployment is imposed as a severe problem. But is it truly a problem that we no longer have to work so many useless hours? Unemployment is a sign of unused potential. How can we claim that there is not enough work? There is as much work as there are human needs and desires. Less useless work is a positive fact. There is still an abundance of useful and socially necessary work.

Current unemployment approaches do not provide permanent solutions. Unemployment in terms of wage labour, in its current understanding, will increase and this cannot be changed. People, however, will continue to work. Intergenerational replacement is not assured due to low fertility, which is a global and highly serious problem. Parents cared for grandparents because they raised them. Parents had children because they hoped that when they grow old, those children would care for them. That is now disrupted. In addition to sub-Saharan Africa, which will adopt global demographic behavior later, a shortage of young economically active population is about to emerge in the near future, mainly in the social sector. Among the fastest-growing occupations in the USA are social workers. This affluent state has the possibility of addressing its internal problem at the expense of other states. It takes away needed young and educated labor force from them. Even such an approach is not sustainable.

At the Council of Ministers of Employment, Social Affairs, Health and Consumer Protection (EPSCO) in Brussels in February 2012 this year, a document on the effects of the crisis was presented. It includes a recommendation to increase the number of “white-collar occupations” (healthcare and social services) in Slovakia as a means of reducing high unemployment. It is clear this should have a positive effect on citizens’ health. Slovakia has relatively low employment in this field compared to other EU member states.

Slovakia has long had high unemployment and generally the highest rate of long-term unemployment. The substance of the Slovak economy, built on “cheap” labor and a weak social sector, therefore carries its own pathology: the shortest duration of healthy aging in the EU, dissatisfaction with life in Slovakia, and shorter life expectancy. Many formerly developing countries have already outpaced us. For example, Malaysia already has similar GDP levels and not only assembles cars, but also develops them itself.

Unemployment Stress

Unemployed people suffer stigma of failure. In society there remains the view of them as people who do not want to work and who live at my expense. Very rapidly, mass painful experience with job loss has forced many to change this perspective. According to Michael Marmot’s findings, a 1% increase in unemployment causes the rise in number of suicides by up to 0.8% and similarly in murders by 0.8% (Hetteš, 2013 (a)). Therefore, the claim that unemployment is a necessary evil in the interest of preserving flexibility and economic dynamism sounds truly antisocial in this light.

People affected by unemployment suffer stress. A major current challenge is to teach citizens to live in a society where job loss is an ordinary, almost classic, life event. Even though media often place all unemployed in one group where all are demanding, unsocial, and unwilling, this is not true.

It is necessary to focus work and effort on helping and supporting the unemployed in the direction of:

  1. Not being impatient and helping them understand that they are not themselves responsible for the situation.
  2. Not trying to solve everything immediately. Spread the effort to find new work over a longer period linked to other activities.
  3. If they feel abandoned and despondent, seek fulfillment through volunteering or some local activity.
  4. Doing physical exercise. Physical movement, even walking, cycling, or other activities that are not financially demanding, brings relief.
  5. Engaging in hobbies, interests and forgotten pursuits. A jobless state does not mean laziness. One possible way to prevent stress is to start reading again and rediscovering the local library.
  6. Returning to school. Participating in adult education can help dispel negative feelings and can also improve employability and the chance of new work.
  7. Living a healthy lifestyle without addictive substances. Eat healthily and moderately. Keep a full, regular daily schedule.

Volunteering has considerable potential to reduce the impact of unemployment on a person’s stress. Voluntary work can expand work experience and skills. Long periods without employment can disrupt the organized part of the working day through loss of rhythm. Large gaps in structured résumés are unattractive to potential employers, so filling them through volunteering is useful. During voluntary work, recovery and new learning can occur, improving employability. A non-active life can trigger unemployment syndrome, so offering meaningful alternatives for time use is useful. Job search is often a repetitive series of attempts and failures. Volunteering allows a person to leave this perspective-less circle and offers other priorities and possibilities for future work. Unemployment often brings loss of social contacts, which volunteer-sector work can offset. Voluntary work often means working with professionals who know labour-market opportunities and conditions very well. Their knowledge and help can be decisive.

Impacts of Unemployment

Economic loss of employment means a loss of income for the person. After 1989, society adopted a range of values from individualistically oriented teachings. Among them is personal responsibility, which includes job loss. In them unemployment is understood as personal failure. Changing family structure, with redistribution of women’s and men’s positions within it, brings further change. Many men cannot cope with their own job loss, while the woman works and the bulk of household responsibilities may be shifted onto her, a burden she may resist despite having enough time. A man’s increased role in the family is not for him the same substitute for job loss as it often is for a woman. Sadness, depression, and aggression may accompany this state of unfairness and personal blame. Unemployment causes problems in marital cohabitation. The existing fertility decline can be further deepened by the threat of job loss. Families with unemployed parents often have difficulties raising already born children. Parents’ depression can be transmitted to their children. The younger generation is often more threatened by the impossibility of obtaining suitable work than their parents, and often more threatened by poverty than their grandparents. Lack of work opportunities increases, for example, youth crime. Schools increasingly act as places for concentrating unemployable youth rather than educational workplaces.

The duration of the period during which an individual is without work affects their mental life. Those with better prerequisites, greater self-belief, and stronger belief in their abilities show lower levels of depression after longer searches for suitable work.

Solving Job Loss

In general, all of us are convinced that if we work diligently, we cannot lose our job. In long-term employment with the same employer this belief is especially reinforced. In Europe the average length of employment with the same employer has been constantly shortening, and reversals are increasing where people change employers and even entire careers and occupations. In Slovakia today, most citizens fear job loss most of all other insurable events. The threat is all the more serious because job loss means, for some risk groups, practically the end of a working career. So-called flexi-istota with flexibility in labour-law relations can be useful only if there is certainty of work placement, which at a high unemployment rate is illusory.

A classical reaction to unexpected termination of an employment contract can have several known time-determined phases. Denial (1) is followed by anger (2) caused by betrayal by the surroundings and employer. Later there may be a period of bargaining attempts (3) and attempts to return to work under worse conditions. This includes the effort to find replacement work elsewhere, alone or with another person’s help. After failure, resignation, sadness, and depression (4) can appear, along with a general drop in activity. The final phase is abandonment of hope (5). As time since dismissal passes, unemployed people move through these phases. Gradually, a person changes into a shape where they no longer can find work by themselves. They may change to such a degree that they are no longer acceptable to most employers. In effect, they become like a sick person who needs help returning to normal life. Social entrepreneurship, or social cooperatives, could have large potential here. An entrepreneur in social enterprise should also have at least some minimum knowledge from social work to better understand employees. Social entrepreneurship represents a possible alternative for developing employment compared to classical profit-driven entrepreneurship.

Long-term non-involvement in working processes, inability to actively work, and insecurity often cause varied health and psychological problems (high blood pressure, weight loss, nicotine, alcohol, and others). The most dramatic is the rise in suicides. To mitigate, prevent, and even address the effects of unemployment, social work can be used. Unlike most other professions, one can say that the profession of social work is not facing extinction; it will not be fundamentally changed and guarantees lifelong employment. The need for social workers will grow and, with the progressing demographic revolution of ageing, we must prepare for a future shortage of social workers in relation to the overall shortage of labour force generally.

A long-term unemployed person should be guided toward an active life attitude. Such a person has the option to seek engagement as a self-employed person, even if they previously knew only employee status. Age no longer determines whether one is suitable for further education. It is always possible to gain new education, knowledge, or skills. It is necessary to break closure, enable exchange of opinions, and avoid self-isolation. It is necessary to maintain a system that mirrors an ordinary working day. Stated differently, passivity triggers a defeatist mechanism. Passivity manifests as fear of even considering possible solution variants. Avoiding listening to other views and perhaps also to useful experiences (examples of good practice) are forms of passivity. Passivity also means withdrawal from contacts, hiding fears internally, and self-blame. Social support and help from the environment allows the unemployed, through information and advice, to approach resolution of their situation more actively. A help network can include friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, and also professionals. A professional counsellor among qualified social workers may be indispensable. There are several strategies and procedures for job search. Procedures can use both formal and informal tools and resources. As with job loss, job search itself has phases. These are not very different. Failure usually prevails over success, which is typical. Therefore, maintaining an active approach of the unemployed is necessary. Long-term unemployed people lose motivation more easily and are more inclined to believe in failure. Job-search techniques today have expanded to virtual social networks such as Facebook and its imitators (Twitter, LinkedIn). Here caution is needed both by those who enter data and those who use data from such sources.

A professional (counsellor) should act as a facilitator when clarifying for the client who is temporarily unemployed what abilities, experience, and interests he or she has. The client must gain certainty that this state is temporary. The counsellor should help the client find answers about what they should improve, what they should learn, or where they could improve. No less important is helping the client to market sometimes even unique skills. It often happens that the client themselves does not know what they could do or where they could work in a new job. Because many currently required occupations are disappearing and new ones are emerging, not everyone can orient themselves without external help. In a manner similar to universities for older adults, where younger teachers mostly teach older learners, even in employment counselling advisers can be younger than their clients. Age cannot be a barrier in job search, just as there is no upper limit to education. This is an example of intergenerational solidarity and non-discrimination. Quite often, a young adviser can help an older client who has worked for years in one profession and never considered doing anything else, by advising them that this is not the end but a new beginning and continuity of what came before. Learning to handle the situation of looking for work after years of honest effort is not easy. Writing résumés, cover letters, and applications in such contexts is subjectively stressful and humiliating. It is necessary to help clients manage unemployment stress also with techniques and exercises, classic or new, that help handle stress.

Unemployment brings many psychosocial problems. Due to the usual drop or loss of income, daily routines and options of unemployed people can change dramatically. In our culture, status in employment was often strongly status-based. Sadly, people are often judged by income and status achieved in working life. Loss of work may be experienced as the loss of all of that, as an ending and injustice. This often transfers to the family. In families where parents are unemployed, or employed only in non-standard work, tension grows and problems also emerge among children. Family form is changing, but can become uncomfortably accelerated if the family breadwinner loses work. A parent often transfers dissatisfaction into behavior toward a partner, children, and surroundings. It is necessary to understand the real cause of today’s high unemployment and the meaning of work for human life. Qualified counsellors can help clarify this for clients and help them find an active and positive approach to solving it. New forms of social participation, even in different work environments and different labour relations, can help the affected person find meaning and gain desire to continue.

Social Work and Unemployment in Slovakia

Because of favorable geographical location and historical development, if we rely on GDP per capita and expected life expectancy data, Slovakia belongs among the wealthiest countries in the world. Comparing measures of current individual consumption by purchasing power between Slovakia and the Czech Republic, Slovakia is already more favourable according to Eurostat’s 2012 assessment. Slovakia is a country of low solidarity. It has the Bratislava Self-Governing Region, which is among the economically strongest in ... , and at the same time regions with low economic strength and high unemployment. Slovakia is among countries with the lowest orientation toward social development. In dividing gross domestic product, it allocates a below-average share to social matters compared with the EU average (Hetteš, 2013 (b)) and ranks fifth from the bottom. The share of workers in the social sector even relatively declined between 2000 and 2009. Population aging, high unemployment (around 14%) and the worst situation in long-term unemployment (about 9%) create potential for employment growth precisely in social work. In general, low wage levels are currently even more disadvantageous in remuneration for social-sector tasks.

Despite the objective need for social work, awareness of the supposed oversupply of social-work graduates on the labour market still prevails. According to a survey among social-work graduates in three Slovak cities, the following findings can be reported. About 74% of them find their first job within the first five interviews. Some, however, do so only after 16 interviews. This confirms that interviews are largely unsuccessful and perseverance is required. In time terms, this means roughly two months. Within six months about 80% find work. Sixty percent receive an offer of full-time employment. The share of non-standard contracts (self-employment, part-time), to which discriminatory treatment is applied, is growing. If a young person does not work full-time, their social rights and securities are often harmed, even though the European Commission strives for equality. Public opinion itself does not readily accept equal rights for those who are not working full-time in the classic full-time form. For now, about 80% of graduates find work in the area in which they studied. A reason for not working in the social area is low wage attractiveness, but equally the non-existence of a workplace because society has not created it. Among graduates, the most common placement is in the public sector, less in the private sector, and the non-profit sector is only third. However, the non-profit sector has the greatest development potential. It is striking that one-third of graduates working in social work mainly earn their living from employment services and unemployment-related issues.

A positive fact is the active approach when looking for employment. Job seekers mainly use information from advertisements, offers, social networks, and they themselves also actively send information (curricula vitae) directly to potential employers. Fewer people depend on direct help from public employment offices (around 15%) for obtaining job positions and tips. The main barrier they felt when job searching was insufficient practical experience, which is logical for graduates. Practical work during studies could be accepted as experience and, surely, even volunteer work. Preparation obtained at school and its erroneous orientation were reported less frequently. The repeated problem is the lack of jobs (around 25%) for social-work graduates, which corresponds to what was already stated earlier. As most graduates stated, they adapted successfully and without major problems to the conditions of their first job after graduation.

Conclusion

Social work faces considerable work in connection with unfinished transformation of the labour market and ongoing financial and economic crisis. It is necessary to prepare the population preventively for possible unemployment. Unemployment is an objective phenomenon that does not stem from personal failure. Despite employment statistics, there is enough work. Human desires and needs remain unmet. Population aging caused by the demographic revolution will soon reduce and create a shortage of the needed labour force necessary to sustain civilization. Ironically, a shortage of social workers will also occur. Slovakia will not, unlike most other countries, have the opportunity to compensate for this from abroad. Qualified social workers will have to rely on lay volunteers more than before. Volunteering, self-help, and other forms in social services can partially saturate these needs.

Authors: doc. RNDr. Miloslav Hetteš, CSc. PhDr. Ingrid Ferenčíková Literature List

Monograph Publication HETTEŠ, M. Starnutie spoločnosti. Vybrané kapitoly sociálnej práce so seniormi. Bratislava: VŠZSP sv. Alžbety, 2011 HETTEŠ, M. (a) Sociálna súdržnosť a istota v sociálnej práci. Nitra: UKF FSVZ, 2013 Journal citations HETTEŠ, M. (b): GlobalChallenges and SocialWelfare in Slovakia. In Prohuman, 2013 (expert internet journal - social work, psychology, pedagogy, social policy, health care, nursing), 2013, http://www.prohuman.sk/socialna-praca/global-challenges-and-social-welfare-in-slovakia