February 16 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria posted a jobless rate of 4.2% in the fourth quarter of last year, or 0.5 percentage points (pp) higher than in the comparable period of 2022, the statistical office said on Friday.
The employment rate among those aged 15 to 64 in October-December fell by an annual 1.2 pp to 70.5%, corresponding to some 2.81 million people, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) said in a quarterly report. The share of economically active people aged 15-64 was 73.7% in the three months to the end of December, marking a decline of 0.8 pp from a year earlier.
In the last quarter of 2023, the number of unemployed people amounted to 128,600, with men making up 53.6% of all unemployed.
Youth unemployment, or the share of people in the 15-29 age bracket who were not working, increased by 0.4 pp to 7.9% in the October-December period, equivalent to 26,600 unemployed youth.
The long-term jobless rate, or the share of those without a job for a year or more, rose by 0.2 pp to 2.2%, or 66,400 people, representing 51.7% of all unemployed.
There were some 1.05 million economically inactive people aged 15-64 in the fourth quarter, of whom 593,600 were women, NSI data showed. The total number of people aged 15-64 not in the labour force was equal to 26.3% of the population in that age group.