Romania's unemployment rate up to 5 pct in 2020

Romania's unemployment rate rose last year to 5 percent from 3.9 percent in 2019, hitting a high of 17.3 percent among youth (15-24 years), shows data released on Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INS). By gender, the gap between male and female unemployment rates was 0.6 percentage points (5.3 percent for men, as to 4.7 percent for women), while by residential areas the gap was 1.4 percentage points (5.8 percent in rural areas compared to 4.4 percent in urban areas). "Lower and middle school graduates were affected to a higher extent by unemployment, with jobless rates for these categories standing at 8.1 percent and 5.1 percent, respectively. The unemployment rate among people with higher education was just 2.2 percent," INS specifies. The rate of long-term unemployment (out-of-work periods longer than one year) was 1.5 percent, and the incidence of long-term unemployment (the percentage of long-term-unemployed people of the total unemployed) was 29.9 percent. The youth long-term unemployment rate (six months or longer) was 8.2 percent, and the incidence of youth long-term unemployment was 47.2 percent. Romania's active population in 2020 was of 8.973 million people, of whom 8.521 million were employed and 452,000 were unemployed. The employment rate for the working age population (aged 15 to 64) was 65.6 percent, down 0.2 percentage points from the previous year. Just like in previous years, the employment rate was higher for men (74.4 percent, compared to 56.5 percent female employment). By residential areas, the employment rate was higher in urban areas (67.1 percent, compared to 63.8 percent in rural areas). The youth employment rate (15-24 years) was 24.6 percent, while the old-age employment rate (55-64 years) was 48.5 percent. "The old-age employment rate was highest among higher education graduates (88.8 percent). 68.1 percent of the people with medium education level were employed and only 43.4 percent of the people with a low education level had a job," INS reports. The number of employees was down by 81,000 compared to the year before, but still accounted for the largest share (76.2 percent) in the total employed population. In 2020, self-employed and unpaid family workers accounted for 22.6 percent of the employed population. Skilled workers in agriculture, forestry and fishing accounted for 17.6 percent of the total employed population. Significant shares in the total employed population were also held by skilled workers (15.8 percent), service workers (15.7 percent) and specialists in various fields (15.5 percent). 20.5 percent of the total employed persons worked in agriculture, 29.7 percent in industry or construction and 49.8 percent in services. 6.774 million people were employed in non-agricultural activities, with the most significant shares represented by manufacturing (22.7 percent), trade (19.3 percent) and construction (10.9 percent) employees. Compared to 2019, the most significant decreases in the number of employed persons were registered in the manufacturing industry (-101,900 persons) and in agriculture, forestry and fishing (-96,500 persons). The most significant increases compared to the previous year were registered in trade (+38,700 persons) and construction (+22,100 persons). As many as 581,000 people (6.8 percent of the total number of employed persons) worked part-time last year. The vast majority of part-time workers was in the agricultural sector (83.4 percent). In 2020, the average effective working week for the main activity was 38.5 hours per week; 148,000 people also performed secondary activities, working an average of 13.8 hours per week. AGERPRES (RO - editor: Andreea Marinescu; EN - author: Simona Klodnischi, editor: Simona Iacob)

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