Unemployment rate: 4.7 percent in Q4 2017, unemployment among youth: 21.2 percent, highest level

The national unemployment rate of the previous year's last quarter was 4.7 percent, equal to the one recorded in the previous quarter, and the highest level of unemployment, of 21.2 pct was reached among young people (15-24 years old), according to data released on Wednesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INS).

By gender, the male unemployment rate exceeded by 0.9 percentage points the women unemployment rate, namely 5.1 percent for men and 4.2 percent for women and by residence, the difference was also of 0.9 percentage points, with the number of unemployed people in rural areas at 5.2 percent as compared to the number of unemployed people in urban areas, at 4.3 percent.

On the other hand, the employment rate of the work age population (15-64 years) stood at 63.4 percent, down 1.9 percentage points below the value registered the previous quarter. The youth employment rate (15-24) was 22.9 percent. The employment rate of the 20-64 year population stood at 68.4 percent, by 1.6 percentage points lower than the national target of 70 percent, as established in the context of Europe Strategy 2020.

Employment rate was higher among men (71.8 percent as compared to 54.8 percent for women, and also in the case of people in the urban area (65 percent as compared to 61.5 percent pct in the rural area), the INS data indicate.

In last year's Q4, Romania's active population amounted to 8.966 million people, of whom 8.541 million were working and 425,000 were unemployed.AGERPRES(RO - editor: Andreea Marinescu; EN - author: Simona Iacob, editor: Maria Voican)