Clothing Industry as a source for employment in Macedonia - focus on the Municipality of Shtip

The macroeconomic analysis in the last few years points to the fact that the
performances of the clothing industry are still small from the aspect of the growth
of the added value and the participation of the GDP. The representation of the
clothing industry on national level in regions and is with the biggest domination in
the eastern region, whereupon the information say that more than one third of the
employees and the companies in the clothing industry are concentrated in this
region. The aim of this paper is to show the circumstance in the clothing industry
as a source for employment in Shtip. In this paper with the help of a statistical
elaboration, the data for the numbers of employees and the number of unemployed
(according to gender and education) will be presented. Today at the level of
municipality of Shtip, from total of 1786 active business subjects, there are 58
manufacturing facilities for textile and clothes, within which there are 5610
employees. The number of unemployed individuals in municipality of Shtip, in the
last three years records a continuous trend of a decrease, whereupon the same in
2009 was 6990 unemployed individuals, and in 2011 a total number of 5528
unemployed individuals (from which 3370 men and 2158 women).
For the improvement of the situation of unemployment in Shtip throughout this
paper will be offered some actions like trainings for a certain target group of
unemployed (especially men) for pre qualification and over qualification in the
direction of the needs of the manufacturing clothing industry, as well as trainings
for the unemployed population at the level of municipalities, for overcoming the
prejudices about the biological division of labour (to male and female professions,
where the sewing is still considered to be a „women's profession“) and all is with
the aim for efficient allocation of the disposable resources (the basic paradigm of
the economic science), a decrease in unemployment, an increase in production, a
growth of the expenditure and an increase in the level of the standard of life and
the quality of life within the community.
Key words: clothing industry, employment, regional development.