Unemployment rises to 17%, INSTAT survey shows

TIRANA, Jan. 22 – Albania’s unemployment rate climbed by 1.1 percent to 16.9 percent in the third quarter of 2013, says a labour force survey conducted by the country’s state Institute of Statistics. The survey on some 5,000 households nationwide showed Albania had some 190,000 jobless people aged from 15 to 64 years compared to 928,500 employed people.
INSTAT data show youth unemployment, people aged from 15 to 29 years, rose to 27 percent in the third quarter of 2013 and to 14 percent for the age-group of 30 to 64.
The survey shows most jobless people, some 88.6 percent, address relatives and friends to find a job. This method is combined with direct applications to employers (63.6 percent) and announcement on newspapers and websites.
The survey shows that 16.7 percent of the economically inactive population aged from 15 to 64 years said they were not looking for a job because they believed there were no available jobs.
Around 13 percent of economically inactive from the group age of 15 to 29 are classified as discouraged workers compared to 21.3 percent for the adult economically inactive population of 30 to 64 years old.
INSTAT said that starting from the second quarter of 2014, the sample of surveyed households will gradually increase from 5,040 households to 8,000 households nationwide.
INSTAT says 22 percent of employees in the third quarter of 2013 were employed in the market services, 17 percent in public services, 43 percent in agriculture, 8 percent in the construction sector and 7.5 percent in the processing industry.
INSTAT had earlier reported Albania’s unemployment rate remained at 12.8 percent in the third quarter 2013, unchanged for the fifth quarter in a row.
Despite the crisis it has been facing, Albania’s private sector which accounts for 80 percent of the GDP, continues remaining the top employer with around 83 percent of the total number of employees. While the number of people employed in the private agriculture sector is estimated at around 519,000 under an INSTAT survey, the number of those employed in the private non-agricultural sector rose by 5.7 percent to 288,380 in the third quarter of 2013, compared to the same period a year ago, according to INSTAT data. Compared to the third quarter of 2012, some 15,713 people were hired in the private non-agricultural sector.
The number of people employed in the public sector remained unchanged at 163,800 in the third quarter of the year. Albania’s minimum wage rose to 22,000 lek (Euro 154) in the third quarter of 2013, while average wages in the public sector rose to 52,600 (Euro 368). Only around 7,750 people benefit monthly unemployment assistance of around 6,850 lek (Euro 48).