Original article (in Bosnian) was published on 11/4/2025; Author: Nerma Šehović
On the Facebook page Proud Bosniaks, a comparison was posted between the “success” of Fadil Novalić’s government and the “failure” of the new Federation government in creating new jobs. The numbers used for this comparison are not accurate.
On April 7, 2025, Facebook page Ponosni Bosnjaci posted a claim suggesting that in the first two months of the mandate of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina government, “15,000 jobs disappeared”, which was compared to the first year of the mandate of the previous prime minister Fadil Novalic’s entity government, which is said to have “created” 25,000 jobs in that period. As “evidence” for this comparison, the post shared a screenshot of a headline from Vecernji List, which states that 15,437 people lost their jobs in two months, while 10,460 people found employment, and a screenshot of the front page of Stav, which states that Novalic’s government “succeeded” in creating 25,000 new jobs.
The same claims were posted on several other accounts on Facebook and X.
What are the Facts?
The post somewhat contradicts itself, as the claim about the “15,000 jobs” lost does not match the screenshot that states that over 15,000 people lost their jobs, while at the same time, just over 10,000 people found employment.
The screenshot from the post was taken from an article published on the web portal of Vecernji List on April 1, 2025. The claims in the headline are based on data from the Federal Employment Agency’s bulletin for January and February 2025.
According to the bulletin, in January 2025, 8,474 people were removed from the employment register, and 5,559 of them were employed. A total of 10,906 people registered for unemployment, with 8,615 due to the termination of their employment. In February, 7,892 people were removed from the employment register, and 4,901 of them were employed. A total of 8,809 people registered for unemployment, with 6,822 due to the termination of their employment. Therefore, in the first two months of this year, around 15,000 people left, and about 10,000 people started working. This means that around 5,000 jobs were “lost” during this period.
The number of employed people in the Federation of BiH on January 31, 2025, was 551,842, according to the bulletin, which is 0.07% less than the previous year’s average. A year earlier, on January 31, 2024, the number of employed people was 542,116, which is 9,726 fewer than today. Thus, the number of jobs over the past year has increased by nearly 10,000.
The current Government of the Federation of BiH was convened in May 2023, nearly two years ago. According to the data from the Federal Employment Agency from April 30, 2023, there were 539,516 employed people in the Federation. A year later, on April 30, 2024, this number had increased by 7,039. In total, between May 2023 and February 2025, the number of employed people in the Federation increased by 12,326.
The claim that 25,000 jobs were created in the first year of the mandate of the Federation of BiH Government under Prime Minister Fadil Novalic is “supported” by a photograph of the cover page of the Stav magazine from October 2016. Fadil Novalic took office as Prime Minister of the Federation of BiH in March 2015. According to the data from the Federal Employment Agency, on February 28, 2015, the number of employed people in the Federation was 445,970, and a year later, on February 29, 2016, it was 450,491. Therefore, after one year of Fadil Novalic’s mandate, there were 5,000 more jobs, not 25,000. This number was not even close to 25,000 in October 2016, when Stav published an article with this claim.
The inaccurate claim that 25,000 new jobs were created in the 17 months of the work of the Federation of BiH Government under Fadil Novalic was also addressed by our partner web portal, Istinomjer, in an analysis from October 2016. As explained in that analysis, this claim is based on data from the Tax Administration. These data do not refer to the number of new workers, but to all people who had any work engagement during that period, including contracts for services. Analyzing the data from the Federal Employment Agency, Istinomjer also concluded that the actual number of “new” workers in that period was nowhere near 25,000.
Therefore, it is not true that 25,000 jobs were created in the first year of Novalic’s mandate, nor that 15,000 jobs were “lost” in the first year of the current Federation Government’s mandate. Given the facts, we consider the post of these claims to be fake news.
