Slovakia's labour market test: reporting a vacancy and the confirmation to fill it

The Slovak labour office issues a confirmation that a vacant post can be filled once the post has sat on the vacancy register for the prescribed number of working days and no suitable domestic candidate has been found. The period depends on the residence title applied for: 20 working days for employment, 15 for the EU Blue Card and for seasonal work, 10 where a work permit applies.

Five periods, one decision

Reporting the vacancy is a separate act and it must come before the application. The Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs and Family of the Slovak Republic ties the length of the registration to the title the worker will later apply for.

What the report says has to match what the application later says. If the job title, the place of work or the agreed pay drifts between the register and the file, the labour office is assessing a different post from the one that was published, and the clock restarts. This is the most common reason a start date moves by a month with nothing wrong on the candidate's side.

When the labour office refuses a positive confirmation

Registration is necessary, not sufficient. The labour office also examines the employer. Under Section 21a of Act No. 5/2004 Coll., it does not issue a confirmation with consent where the employer has breached the ban on illegal employment in the 2 years before the application. That bar cannot be worked around with a new post or a different district office: it attaches to the employer, not to the vacancy.

The second condition is comparable working and pay conditions. Act No. 5/2004 Coll. requires the foreign worker to be employed on terms comparable to a comparable employee of the same employer. In practice the pay stated in the vacancy report has to match what your own people on that job earn, not the statutory minimum derived from the degree of work difficulty. The Labour Inspectorate checks that alignment years after the start date.

Seasonal employment gets a lighter regime: the ministry requires the vacancy to be registered for 15 working days instead of 20, and 5 working days where a seasonal engagement is being extended. It is the only general shortening of the labour market test outside the shortage occupation list.

What the employer has to keep

The application is filed by the employer or by the worker, depending on the procedure the confirmation will be used in. The labour office assesses the place of work, the agreed type of work, the duration of the employment and the pay, and it checks whether a suitable Slovak citizen or a citizen of another European Union member state is on the register of jobseekers. Where one is, the office refers that candidate to the employer, and the registration period is exactly the window in which the referral happens. An employer who does not take a referred candidate has to be able to say why, and the reason has to stay inside the qualification requirements stated in the vacancy report.

Watch posts that change between the report and the start date. If, after the confirmation is issued, you decide to place the candidate at another site or to change the type of work, the confirmation does not cover the new terms. You report a new vacancy and the registration period runs in full again, even for the same person and the same employer.

The confirmation is a document for the residence file, not the end of the duties. ÚPSVaR requires the employer to keep a copy of the worker's residence document for the whole duration of the employment. Keep the dated vacancy report, the labour office decision and the employment contract in the version attached to the application as well. An inspection compares exactly those three.

There is no fee on this part of the procedure; the labour office charges the employer nothing for the vacancy report or for the confirmation. The cost is time. For ordinary temporary residence for the purpose of employment it is 20 working days of registration, close to a calendar month, and it belongs in the start date plan before you confirm any date to the candidate.

The full sequence from the vacancy report to the notice of start is set out in the employer procedure for hiring a third country national in Slovakia. The Czech equivalent, built on a public vacancy register, is set out in the Czech employee card, and corridor timings are compared in the timeline by country.

If you need to know whether a given post has to pass the labour market test at all and which period applies to it, send the job title, the place of work and the intended start date through the employers page.