Slovenia's labour market test and the PDM-KTD form

The labour market test checks whether the register of unemployed holds suitable candidates for a vacancy. The Employment Service of the Republic of Slovenia runs it on the basis of form PDM-KTD and issues its notice within five working days. You then have 30 days to file the permit application.

When the test is a condition

The test is not a separate administrative procedure. It is a condition built into several permits. The Employment Service can run it before you file, on your initiative, or run it itself while deciding on the permit. The difference is not legal but temporal. Running it in advance tells you whether the application is worth making before you pay the fee and assemble the file.

For workers from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia the form is more than a condition. It is what starts the preliminary placement procedure under the bilateral agreement, in which the Employment Service contacts its counterpart in the country of origin. Without the filed form that route does not begin, even when you have already chosen the candidate.

How it runs and where time is lost

You file PDM-KTD electronically on the Employer Portal, for which you must register first. The Employment Service issues its notice on the state of the register within five working days. The path then splits.

If there are no suitable candidates, you continue with the work permit or single permit. The application must be filed within 30 days of the notice. That deadline does not stretch because you were waiting for a document from the country of origin. Miss it and the test is run again.

If there are suitable candidates, you cannot hire the foreign national. You can report the vacancy on form PDM-1 and agree with the Employment Service on referrals or publication.

The usefulness of the test rests on the job description. A request for a general construction labourer triggers a comparison against a broad group in the register and usually finds candidates. A request for a welder with a named process and certificate, a stated language level and a specific place of work triggers a comparison against a narrow profile the register often does not hold. The difference is not a trick. It is that the second description matches the work you actually do.

Employers often read a refusal of consent as a product of the test itself. In practice it is more often a product of a mismatch between the description and the evidence, one of the recurring patterns set out in the review of how EU work permit applications fail.

What happens if you skip it

The test is not compulsory as a separate step. If you skip it, the Employment Service checks the condition during the permit procedure. The service itself warns that this can lengthen the procedure or lead to refusal.

The cost comparison is plain. The labour market test is free and takes five working days. The administrative fee for a single permit is 70.00 EUR, paid on filing at the administrative unit, with a further 15.47 EUR for card production on collection at the office or 26.51 EUR for personal delivery by post. A refused application means you spent that money and several weeks of procedure on an answer available in five days.

For part of the labour market the test is not required at all. The Employment Service gives consent without examining the register if the occupation appears on the list in the ministerial order, covered in the guide to occupations exempt from the labour market test. The rest of the procedure does not shorten, because the single permit is still issued by the administrative unit and the Employment Service still has 15 days for consent. Werklist runs these procedures for employers in Slovenia, and the scope of that work is set out on the employers page.

The test does not assess your business model and does not judge whether the post makes sense. It answers one question, whether the register holds a person matching the profile as you wrote it. If the answer is not the one you expected, the writing is worth checking before the procedure is.