News

18 November 2025

“Young people should not stay idle to let technologies replace them; we should train them how to manage them.” This is what Deputy Ombudsman Maria Filipova said at the conference “Attractive Professions for a Sustainable Future” organized by Bulgarian Industrial Capital Association (BICA).

Maria Filipova drew attention to the worrying trend that a large segment of young people “neither study nor work” and emphasized that society must afford opportunities for early career guidance, vocational trainings, internships and first job. She also emphasized the need for sustainable policies for retraining, development of digital skills and support for youth employment.

The Deputy Ombudsman placed particular emphasis on dual training as an effective tool to prepare young people for the labor market and for the building of lasting partnerships between the business and schools.

“Technology is a tool while the wellbeing of people is what we seek,” she said further and stressed that professionalism, critical thinking and communication skills continue to be indispensable in the Artificial Intelligence age.

The forum was attended by the Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Group of GERB-UDF Denitsa Sacheva, the Co-chair of the Parliamentary Group of We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria Nikolay Denkov, the Deputy Minister of Labor Natalia Efremova, the Deputy Minister of Education Academician Nikolaj Vitanov, officials from the Executive, social partners, employer and trade union organizations, human resource experts, scientists and employers from leading sectors.

The event presented the new trends on the labor market, with an emphasis on the role of skills as an asset of the future. On behalf of the hosting organization BICA, the event was opened by Rumen Radev, Chairman of the BICA Management Board; Assoc. Prof. Dr. Milena Angelova, BICA Secretary General, was the moderator of the forum.

The conference showed the rating of the most attractive and most unattractive professions as an analytical model that has been developed by BICA experts and experts from the academia under the project from “A Comprehensive Approach to Ensuring Motivated Qualified Human Resources” co-financed by the ESF+ (the European Social Fund Plus) through the Human Resources Development Programe 2021-2027. The top six attractive professions are specialists in technical sciences, operational technicians in the field of information and communication technologies, software developers of web content, designer data base administrators, electronic technicians, along with a specialist in personnel training and development. The six most unattractive jobs are gardeners, air traffic safety personnel, musicians, dancers, freight forwarding agents and aircraft pilots.