The number of employed people has reached one of the highest rates in recent years

Towards the end of the second quarter of this year, the number of employed people in our country amounted to 1 million 343.4 thousand people. Thus, the share of the employed population in the Republic of Moldova increased by almost 6% compared to the corresponding period of last year, when only 1 million 270.3 thousand people were employed.

These data have been made public recently by the National Bureau of Statistics and reflect a balance of the country’s domestic labour market and its expansion in recent years. In concrete terms, it is the highest increase in the number of employed people in the last 6 years. For comparison, in 2013, only an insignificant increase of only 1.5 percent was recorded. And last year, in general, the size of the employed population in our country experienced a regression estimated at 2.9 percent. So, this year, the increase in the employed population not only managed to offset the decline of the same period last year, but also to rise to new quotas.

A trend of increase of the employment rate has also been recorded for the population aged 15 and over. The increase in that population category was almost 2.5 percent. The area where most people work has turned out to be the agricultural sector. The number of workers in this field has increased by over 95 thousand and has reached 537.4 thousand employees, which is by over 5% compared to last year.

Respectively, as it was expected, it has given up to the level of unemployment. Towards the end of the second quarter, the number of unemployed in our country was around 40 thousand people, as defined by the International Labour Bureau. That is, there was a drop in the number of people without jobs of 10.5 percent. Consequently, the unemployment rate, the number of unemployed people in the active population, is one of the lowest in recent years, as well as in Europe and the world. For the sake of completeness, this country average indicator was close to 5 percent in 2013. At present, the average unemployment rate in the world is 5.6 percent, while in Germany, the strongest European economy, the unemployment rate is 5.8 percent, one of the lowest in the post-crisis period.

There are also indications that the informal sector is about to stabilize. Thus, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, undeclared work among employees was in the second quarter of this year at 6.6 percent, practically at the level of the same period last year.

Sergiu Iurcu, the head of the social and economic protection Department of CNSM, expressed the hope that the improvement of these indices will be followed by an increase in the level of income in the respective fields of activity and at the same time will be created prerequisites for the increase of workers’ wages. At the same time, he stressed that it is necessary to ensure the sustainability of the employment level of the population, registered in the second quarter, that the growth in question not to be a seasonal but a constant one.

Department of mass media and international relations of CNSM