Hiring into a Slovak shortage occupation: the employer's file

An occupation carried on the Slovak shortage list skips the labour market test. Nothing else in the file moves. The vacancy still goes on the labour office register, the workplace still carries a cap on the share of third country staff, and the Foreign Police still decide the residence permit under Act No. 404/2011 Coll.

What the exemption removes, and what it does not

The legal basis is Act No. 5/2004 Coll. on employment services, published on Slov-Lex. On the standard route the local labour office tests the domestic market first: the vacancy is registered, Slovak and EU candidates are referred against it, and only once that period has run can the office confirm that the post may go to a third country national. Where the occupation appears on the shortage list published by the Central Office of Labour, Social Affairs and Family (ÚPSVaR) for the region the workplace sits in, that waiting period falls away.

The exemption is read per region and per edition. A welder is not exempt in Slovakia as such. A welder at a plant in a region whose current edition carries the trade is exempt, while the same trade at a site in a region that does not carry it goes through the full test. How the list is published, how long an edition runs and which trades hold it from quarter to quarter is set out in Slovakia's shortage occupation list. Historically the simplified regime was tied to districts with registered unemployment below 5 percent under Act No. 5/2004 Coll.; today the entry for the region carries the advantage.

This is where employers lose time without noticing. A file prepared on last year's edition, for a region where the trade has since dropped off, reaches the labour office as an ordinary application and inherits the full registration period. Read the current edition against the region the site actually sits in before every batch of hires, not once a year.

The three duties the exemption leaves standing

The simplified route removes a waiting period. It removes none of the employer's duties under Act No. 5/2004 Coll., and three of them carry the risk.

The vacancy still has to be reported to the local labour office before the worker applies. ÚPSVaR treats the report as the opening act of the file, and a residence application filed against an unreported vacancy is incomplete at the root.

The employer then reports the actual start of employment, and later the actual end, within 7 working days under Act No. 5/2004 Coll. Late reporting is the most common finding in inspections of otherwise lawful hires, because the permit is valid while the paperwork behind it is not.

Third, the share of third country workers at a single workplace is capped on the simplified route, expressed as a percentage of the headcount at that workplace. The percentage sits in the ÚPSVaR guidance and has been amended more than once, so take the current figure from ÚPSVaR before sizing a cohort. An employer who plans forty hires on the simplified route at a site that can carry the exemption for fifteen has the balance pushed back into the full labour market test, with the registration period and the delay that follows it.

The residence half, where the calendar actually goes

The work side is half the file. Temporary residence for the purpose of employment is issued by the Foreign Police under Act No. 404/2011 Coll. on the residence of foreigners, administered by the Ministry of the Interior. The application is lodged at a Slovak embassy or, where the person is already lawfully resident, at a Foreign Police department, and it carries the labour office confirmation, the employment contract, a criminal record extract with an apostille, proof of accommodation and proof of financial cover. The decision deadline and the validity windows on those documents are set out in temporary residence for employment.

Costs fall into two groups: the administrative fee for the residence application, set in the Slovak schedule of administrative fees and higher at an embassy than domestically, and the document costs the employer carries, chiefly translation into Slovak by a sworn translator and the apostille on the criminal record extract. Both are published figures and both are revised, so read the current amount rather than reusing a previous file.

The shortage list shortens the labour office step. It leaves the Foreign Police decision period, the embassy appointment queue and the document legalisation in the origin country untouched, and those three usually dominate the calendar. The full sequence from the vacancy report to the notice of start is in the employer procedure for hiring a third country national in Slovakia.

For a Slovak hire, three checks decide whether the simplified route is available at all: the current ÚPSVaR edition, the region the workplace sits in, and the share of third country workers already at that site. The employer side of a Slovak file is set out on the employers page.