Lithuania has gone up a notch to the 14th position in the Employment Flexibility Index which looks at 41 countries' labour regulation laws.
Lithuania came in 15th last year and was 27th a year before, the Lithuanian Free Market Institute (LLRI), a free market think tank, said on Friday.
The big leap last year was due to the 2017 amendments to the Labour Code, LLRI expert Karolina Mickutė noted, but no significant legal changes were effected recently.
“We've gone up a notch mainly because Italy, that was ahead of Lithuanian, dropped down. Lithuania remains in the middle among EU and OECD members,” Mickutė said in a statement.
She added that Lithuania mandated higher redundancy payments than most other countries and higher mandatory compensation for overtime, nighttime work and work during holidays. Moreover, employers are required to offer a new job for a employees when their function becomes redundant.
In all, 41 member states of the European Union (EU) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) are included in the index.
The Lithuanian Free Market Institute published the Employment Flexibility Index 2020 in cooperation with think tanks in Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Poland and Slovakia.
The Index is based on the data collected by the World Bank for its annual Doing Business report. The index evaluates more than 30 indicators on hiring regulations, working hours, redundancy rules and redundancy costs.
The US, Japan and New Zealand top the index, while France, Mexico and Luxembourg are at the bottom.
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