One in three young men and women jobless, says the country’s official statistics entity.
TIRANA, June 10 – Youth unemployment registered a historic high in the first quarter of 2014 when it rose to 31.3 percent, meaning one out of three people aged from 15 to 29 are out of work, according to a labour force survey published by the country’s Institute of Statistics INSTAT.
Youth unemployment rose to 31.3 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2014, up from 28.1 percent in the final quarter of 2013 and 25.8 percent in the first quarter of 2013.
Youth aged 15 to 29 years old who declared they were students or attending training accounted for 62.7 percent of young men and women economically not active. Around 13 percent of youth are classified as discouraged workers.
With Albania’s average population age at 31, one of the youngest in Europe along with Kosovo, youth unemployment has become a top concern although most young men and women nowadays manage to get a university degree, unveiling the inefficiency of the education system but also crisis impacts as the private sector has almost frozen new hirings.
According to the International Labor Organization (ILO), more than 40 percent of Albania’s youth are unemployed. One of the challenges young people face when seeking gainful employment, is the lack of skills and education to respond to market needs. Young employees are also more exposed to the informal economy than adults. In 2009, 46 percent of all young male employees were informal workers.
Young people face a number of challenges when it comes to seeking gainful employment, such as a lack of skills and education to respond to the market needs. These challenges are compounded for youth with disabilities, who have even more limited access to higher education, says the UNDP which is assisting the Albanian government improve youth employment opportunities in the northern Lezha, Kukes, and Shkodra regions, where the rates are currently highest.
With university degrees not matching market needs, the Albanian government is promoting vocational education training whose students stand better chances to find a job.
Unemployment rate up
Albania’s unemployment rate climbed to 18.3 percent in the first quarter of 2014, up from 17 percent in the final quarter of 2013 and 14.9 percent in the first quarter of 2013, according to a labour force survey with around 5,000 households nationwide.
INSTAT says 22.2 percent of employees in first quarter of 2014 were employed in the market services, 17.6 percent in public services, 43 percent in agriculture, 8.4 percent in the processing industry and 6 percent in the long-ailing construction sector.
Around 84 percent of the jobless people said they addressed relatives and friends to find a job combined with placing or reading job announcement on newspapers and the internet.
INSTAT data show Albania had 143,507 people had registered themselves as jobless with regional employment offices, accounting for a jobless rate of 14 percent, up from 13.5 percent in the third quarter of 2013 and an average of 12.8 percent in the past couple of years under this methodology.
Data shows the private non-agriculture sector had around 312,500 workers at the end of the first quarter of 2014, up only 0.25 percent compared to the final quarter of 2013 but 11.2 percent more compared to the first quarter of 2013.
Employment in the private agriculture sector where all people possessing land are considered self-employed was revised downward to 403,000 people in the first quarter of 2014, down from 446,000 at the end of 2013 and 519,000 at the end of the first quarter of 2013 based on results from the labour force survey.
