NVA vacancy registration and the Latvian labour market test, step by step

Where the employment rests on an employment contract, the employer registers the vacancy on the CV and vacancy portal of the State Employment Agency (NVA) and a third country national may be hired into it only once it has stood free for at least 10 working days (pmlp.gov.lv, updated 19 February 2026). The NVA opinion on the need to recruit a foreigner closes the stage. It is a precondition for invitation approval, not a parallel step.

What the employer registers and what NVA examines

The vacancy notice names the post, the occupation code, the address of the workplace, the pay and the requirements placed on the worker. Those same fields travel into the invitation and then into the employment contract, which is why they are worth writing once and writing correctly. Requirements drafted narrowly so that no local candidate could qualify are visible to the agency, and a notice whose requirements substantially exceed the competences set out in the relevant occupational standard is itself a refusal ground later in the chain.

NVA publishes the vacancy and offers it to registered unemployed people and jobseekers. The logic of the test is plain: the state looks for a worker in its own labour market first, and only then opens the route to a third country national. Where candidates apply and meet the requirements, the employer has to see them. Turning down a suitable local candidate without a reasoned explanation is the most direct way to lose the opinion.

Two things are fixed in law rather than left to practice. The ten working days are the statutory floor for a vacancy filled by a third country national, and the Cabinet of Ministers sets by regulation how an employer registers the vacancy, justifies the need, cooperates with NVA on filling it, and how NVA issues its opinion. The occupations and cases exempt from the test sit in the same body of regulation, and an exemption, where one applies, removes a whole stage. The first question before a vacancy is drafted is therefore not how long it has to stand, but whether the post has to sit the test at all.

Where the step sits in the chain, and what it costs in time

The opinion is not a separate formality to be squared away later. In the PMLP procedure it is the first of three decisions, and Section 26, paragraph one, point 11 of the Immigration Law refuses the invitation outright where the vacancy was not registered, where no opinion was issued, or where the invited worker's qualification and employment conditions do not match the registered notice. In practice the whole schedule starts at NVA rather than at PMLP.

The arithmetic matters because the faster tracks sit at the wrong end of the chain. Paying 560.00 euro for a five working day permit review, against 160.00 euro for the ordinary 30 day review, buys back weeks at the third decision and nothing at the first. The ten working days the vacancy has to stand are not purchasable at any price, and for a plant planning shift cover that is the real cost of the stage.

The stage itself costs nothing in fees: registering the vacancy with NVA and obtaining the opinion carry no state fee for the employer. The next two decisions do. An employment invitation costs 17.00 euro on paper or 10.00 euro through latvija.lv plus 85.00 euro for the right to employment, so 102.00 or 95.00 euro per person, and the permit review sits on top of that at 160.00 to 560.00 euro (PMLP price list, updated 18 March 2026). The ten working days at NVA appear on neither line, which is exactly why they drop out of the plan.

The mistakes that make this stage run twice

The first is the description of pay. The vacancy carries one figure or one band, the invitation carries another, and PMLP sends the file back at the next step. Correcting an invitation costs 14.00 euro each time and restarts its review, and correcting the vacancy means a fresh ten working days, not a swapped sheet of paper.

The second is a job title that does not match the occupation classifier code. That code is not decorative: an employer inviting a worker into an occupation in major group 9 of the classifier, the elementary occupations, is measured against a stricter standing test under Section 26, paragraph one, point 17, and an inactive taxpayer or a company founded within the previous six months is refused there.

The third is a requirement list written around one particular candidate, for instance a language requirement the work itself does not call for. NVA assesses that requirement on its substance, and a labour inspection may look at it again later.

The fourth is planning the calendar backwards. The employer names a start month to the worker, counts back from the PMLP application, and forgets that the ten working days of vacancy and the drafting of the opinion sit in front of it. Counting forward from the day of vacancy registration is safer: ten working days at NVA, five working days for the invitation, then 30 days or ten or five working days at the permit stage according to the fee paid, and ten working days for PMLP to produce the card once the decision is taken. Until the opinion is in hand the worker should be given a month rather than a week.

The three stages in sequence are set out in the Latvian employment residence permit, and the requirements and refusal grounds of the next step in invitation approval at PMLP. To place Latvia against other corridors, see the corridor comparison by processing time.

The labour market test is the slowest stage and also the one the employer can influence most, because its length depends on how precisely the first vacancy was written.