Private employment agencies in North Macedonia: licensing and user employer duties

The Ministry of Economy and Labour keeps the Register of private employment agencies and publishes the list of licensed agencies (economy.gov.mk, Register). Checking the licence against that list is the first step before signing anything. For foreign workers the permit stays tied to one named employer and one position, which limits what the agency model can do.

What the licence covers, and what it does not

A private agency operates under a licence issued by the Ministry of Economy and Labour. Under the Law on Private Employment Agencies (consolidated text), an agency may not place workers beyond the number of contracts for which the licence was issued, nor beyond the period the licence runs. These are two separate limits and both are checkable before signature: how many contracts the licence covers, and the date it expires.

An employer who signs with an agency whose licence lapses mid procedure is left with an unfinished file and no counterparty that can lawfully finish it. Record the licence expiry date in your own file alongside the contract date, not just the licence number.

The Register is public and held at the Ministry. The check takes as long as opening the list, and it is skipped routinely because the agency presents itself as licensed. The agency's own statement is not evidence. The Register entry is.

Agency work: who is the employer and who carries the duty

Assigning a worker to a user employer is a separate model with a separate licence. Under the Law on Temporary Employment Agencies (mtsp.gov.mk), the assignment rests on an assignment contract between an agency holding a temporary employment licence and a user employer. The agency concludes its own employment contract with the assigned worker. The agency is the formal employer.

That does not release the user employer. The same law leaves it the duties for occupational safety and health and for working conditions at the site where the worker actually works. The split looks like this.

The question a user employer should ask is whether the agency holds a licence for temporary employment specifically, not only a licence for employment mediation. They are different licences in different register entries, and an assignment contract signed with an agency lacking the temporary employment licence has no basis.

Why the model works poorly for foreign workers

For foreign workers, theory and practice part company. The work permit stays tied to one named employer and one position, per the practice of the Employment Agency of the Republic of North Macedonia and the 2026 procedure review at immigration.mk. The worker therefore cannot move freely between user employers while formally employed by the agency, which is exactly the flexibility the assignment model is built to deliver for the domestic workforce.

The consequence is concrete. If an assigned foreign worker moves to another site or another position with a different user, a new procedure is required, not an annex to the assignment contract. An employer who planned to rotate workers across projects after the permit was issued discovers the limit at the moment the project changes. That is a slip measured in weeks, and it runs through the work and residence permit procedure.

Cost splits the same way. The agency charges a service fee on top of wage and contributions, while the user employer pays for flexibility it does not fully receive with a permit tied to one employer. On larger groups the comparison should also take in the quota for employing foreigners, since the number of permits is a limit separate from the number of contracts in the agency's licence.

When the inspector arrives on site, the records are asked of the user as well as the agency. The practice is set out in the review of labour inspection and fines.

The comparison between direct employment and an agency arrangement turns on one question: how often the site and the position change. With permits tied to a named employer and a named post, every such change is a fresh procedure, so the flexibility the agency sells is paid for twice by the user employer.