Blog Post

Looking for shortage jobs in Lithuania is easier than in almost any comparable country, for two reasons nobody puts in the job adverts: if your occupation is on the shortage list the labour market test is waived, and the permit costs your employer EUR 121.

Those two facts should shape how you approach an employer, and they are the whole of your negotiating position.

Why being on the list matters so much

In most countries the obstacle is not you, it is the labour market test: the employer has to advertise the role, wait, and prove that nobody local or in the EU could do it. In the Netherlands that means five weeks of advertising. In Iceland it means competing against every worker in thirty countries.

Lithuania waives it for occupations on the shortage list. The state has already accepted that those roles cannot be filled locally, so the employer does not have to prove it again. That removes the step employers find most burdensome and most often abandon.

Which is why the first thing to establish is not where the jobs are but whether your occupation code is listed. Our guide carries the full set of Lithuanian occupation classifier codes: the Lithuanian shortage occupations list. Find your code there before you send a single application.

What it costs your employer

Set EUR 121 against the alternatives in this batch: the Netherlands charges an employer EUR 681 for a TWV, Denmark DKK 6,055, and Australia AUD 4,015 per adult applicant. Lithuania publishes its fees openly, and they are close to nominal.

That is your argument, and it is worth making explicitly. The pitch is not “will you sponsor me”. It is “my occupation is on the shortage list, so you skip the labour market test, and the permit costs you EUR 121”. That is a different conversation and it lands differently with a small employer who has never hired from abroad.

Where to actually look

1. Start from the shortage list, not from job boards. Find your occupation code, then identify the sectors that employ it. If the list names welders, metalworking machine operators and international freight drivers, the employers are fabrication shops, engineering firms and haulage companies.
2. Approach those employers directly, whether or not they are advertising. A listed occupation and a EUR 121 permit is a cheap hire, and many have simply never considered it.
3. Target the industrial cities as well as Vilnius. Kaunas, Klaipeda and Panevezys carry much of the manufacturing and logistics work, and the competition is thinner.
4. Use the seasonal permit as a foothold if you need income sooner. At EUR 34 for six months it is the cheapest legal entry to the EU labour market anywhere.

If you are highly qualified

Lithuania also issues the EU Blue Card, and its threshold is expressed as a multiplier rather than a fixed sum: 1.5 times the national average wage, reduced to 1.2 times for occupations on the high value added list.

A multiplier is more honest than a fixed figure and more annoying to plan around, because it moves the moment the statistical office publishes a new average. Work from the multiplier and recalculate rather than trusting a euro amount you read anywhere, including here. See what the EU Blue Card actually buys you for whether it is worth clearing a higher bar at all.

What to do

1. Find your occupation code on the shortage list. Everything follows from that single fact.
2. Lead with the waiver and the fee when you approach an employer. They frequently do not know either.
3. Look beyond Vilnius to the industrial cities.
4. Consider the seasonal permit as a first step at EUR 34.
5. Never pay for a job offer. The employer’s share here is EUR 121; nobody needs money from you.

Related: 15 European routes compared and the Polish work visa, which works on a similar basis. Browse Lithuanian and Baltic shortage jobs with visa sponsorship on our board.

Last checked September 2026. Fees are published by the Migration Department and the shortage list is revised periodically. The Blue Card threshold is a multiplier of the national average wage and moves with it.