Labour inspection and fines for employing foreign workers in North Macedonia

Supervision over the employment of foreign nationals sits with the State Labour Inspectorate, a body within the Ministry of Economy and Labour with around 195 staff. Article 23 of the Law on Employment and Work of Foreigners sets a fine of 1,500 euros for an employer that enables illegal employment.

Inspection does not begin on a site visit. Article 18 paragraph 3 of the same law allows the Inspectorate to act ex officio or at the request of the Employment Agency, and the Agency's request comes out of the monthly data matching required by Article 17. An employer that failed to register a worker is usually not reported by anyone; the table showed it.

The fines, provision by provision

The misdemeanour sanctions in the Law on Employment and Work of Foreigners, Official Gazette 217/2015 and 163/2021, are fixed amounts in euros, payable in denar equivalent, and do not scale with company size. The responsible person inside the legal entity is liable for 30 percent of the fine assessed against the company.

The Law on Labour Relations adds a second layer over the same facts. Article 265 sets a fine of 200 to 400 euros for a micro or small employer that is a legal entity, 300 to 600 euros for a medium one and 600 to 1,000 euros for a large one, among other grounds where no employment contract was concluded and the worker was not registered in mandatory pension, health and unemployment insurance before starting work, and where a contract was concluded with a foreign national who does not meet the statutory conditions. Article 264 covers occupational safety and obstruction of the inspector, with a range of 500 to 3,000 euros depending on employer size.

There is also relief on a short clock. Article 29 of the Law on Employment and Work of Foreigners governs the misdemeanour payment order: an offender who pays within eight days of receiving the order pays only half the assessed fine. Miss that window and the file moves to a request to open misdemeanour proceedings, with the discount gone.

What the inspector asks for on site

Article 19 sets three duties that are checked in person. The employer and the foreign national must give access to all documentation on which the work authorisation documents were issued. The foreign national must keep the permit at the place of work and produce it at the request of the authorised control officer. The employer must keep all documentation relating to the work and the payment of foreign nationals for five years from the end of that work.

That five year period is the quiet duty most often overlooked. The worker left three years ago, the company cleared its archive, and the inspector asks for payslips and working time records for a period that is still legally live. Article 16 paragraph 9 of the same law adds to it: the work registration form is kept at the main place of business, and for site work also at the construction site where the foreign national works. The mechanics of that registration are set out in registering the start of work.

The consequence that outlasts the fine

The money is the smaller part of the bill. Article 89 paragraph 2 of the Law on Foreigners bars the Employment Agency from issuing a positive opinion where the employer has been penalised for illegal employment or for failing to register a foreign national as a worker, where insolvency proceedings have been opened, or where it has been penalised for unmet contribution and tax obligations. One final misdemeanour sanction costs the employer not a single file but access to the whole corridor, for every application that follows.

That is why the scale of inspection is worth reading in regional comparison. During 2025 the Labour Inspectorate in Serbia found 2,131 foreign nationals across 247 inspections, of whom 305 were working without an employment contract or without filed mandatory social insurance registrations, while 249 lacked a temporary residence and work permit. The largest groups among the irregularly engaged were nationals of Turkey, Kyrgyzstan, Bangladesh and China. The same supervision model, focused on registrations rather than on the border, applies in North Macedonia.

Article 18 paragraph 4 closes the loop: every six months the Labour Inspectorate reports the proceedings opened and the sanctions imposed to the Employment Agency, which keeps a record of offences by employers and by foreign nationals. That record is the one checked when the next application is filed, and the sequence of the procedure itself is in the permit procedure.

The most common findings are not on the shop floor but in accommodation and address paperwork, covered in accommodation and address registration. Werklist runs these files for employers recruiting from Nepal, India and the Philippines, and the scope is described on the employers page.

An inspection rarely asks for something that did not exist at the outset. An employer that keeps the folder complete from day one passes the check inside a working day.