The Macedonian Forests utility company issued a bid for new lumberjacks, and the call includes an ethnic quota. Even in municipalities where there are no Albanians, the company plans to hire ethnic Albanians as workers.

For example, in Berovo, the call is for 12 ethnic Albanians to be hired. Similar numbers are required in Kriva Palanka, Demir Kapija and Kavadarci, where the census also showed the number of ethnic Albanians in the single digits or 0.

The ruling DUI – SDSM coalition plans to hire thousands in public sector jobs, and is using the ethnic quotas created in the recent, botched census, which was boycotted by over 100,000 ethnic Macedonians and most of the Macedonian diaspora. This produced an inflated share of Albanians in the statistical reports, leading to this push for ethnic hiring. Besides the plans to hire Albanians in towns where there are none, also highly criticized is the plan to use the ethnic quotas in highly skilled jobs where merit should be the only requirement – such as the public healthcare sector.