Serbia faces demographic decline in the Balkans

Zoran Djordjevic has a challenge: ending a hemorrhage of workers that has seen his country lose more than 5 percent of its population over the past decade.

As Serbia’s labor minister, Djordjevic faces the same obstacles as all Balkan countries: relatively low wages, high unemployment and better-paid jobs nearby in the European Union. He hired a team of economists and statisticians, led by a migration expert, to tackle one of Europe’s biggest economic and demographic problems.