The Role of Agriculture for Income and Employment in Bulgarian Rural Areas

The role of agriculture for increasing the well-being of the rural communities has been a major issue in the economic literature and agricultural policy development. It is highly accepted that the agricultural industry plays a major role for providing jobs, business opportunities, incomes and safety net for both professional farmers and rural population. Although in the recent 2 decades EU dedicated a lot of efforts to diversify the rural economy and to provide other alternatives for employment and incomes, and to improve the territorial balance at the urban-rural axis, the agriculture is still the staple industry for rural areas. Meanwhile, the rural areas are characterized with higher unemployment rate compared to the national averages whereas the agriculture very often faces problems hiring not just qualified working force but also non-professional seasonal labour, which is denoted as “unemployment paradox”. The main goal of this research is to analyse how the changes in production structure of Bulgarian agriculture weigh on the employment development and income growth in the rural areas and why relatively high unemployment in rural areas co-exists with demand of labour in the agriculture –“unemployment paradox”. The analysis also aims to determine the current and prospective contribution of agriculture to the income development and employment opportunities in the Bulgarian rural areas. It also analyses the importance of the higher incomes in the rural areas for the labour intensive sectors – such as vegetable production and dairy farming. The main results confirm the interconnection between agriculture and income in the rural areas. Although the unemployment rates are not directly correlated to the shift in the Bulgarian production structure, it is still one of the main factors that is strongly correlated with labour productivity and demand of labour in the rural areas