INTEGRAL ANALYSIS OF SELECTED LABOUR MARKET INDICATORS IN THE CONTEXT OF A COVID-19 PANDEMIC

Individual indicators linked to labour market developments during the COVID-19 pandemic provide a view of a particular area but fail to capture the issue of the impact of the crisis comprehensively. This problem can be addressed by integrating them using multicriteria methods, resulting in a synthetic indicator of a specific labour market. Thus, the issue of the impact of the pandemic on important macroeconomic and labour market indicators can be evaluated by calculating a single indicator. The main objective of this study is to identify the labour market with the highest positive flexibility in relation to the impacts of the pandemic and thus reveal the critical factor that fundamentally reduces the resistance of the labour market to negative pandemic externalities. During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic (2020-Q2), Slovakia reached the highest value of the integral indicator, but in the last recorded wave (2022-Q1), it moved to the last place. Its average integral indicator for all three waves reached the highest average value. However, the highest value of the integral indicator and thus the highest positive flexibility of the labour market during the third wave was recorded by Germany, which evokes the assumption that the approach of the local government and authorities in the mentioned period most effectively protected the labour market from negative fluctuations. The results of the countries during the third wave of the pandemic consider the impact of the most current measures that were implemented at the time of the pandemic.