Main labour market results for the second quarter of 2012
The activity rate of population aged 15 - 64 was 66.6%, by 1.1 percentage points higher in comparison with the second quarter of 2011.
The employment rate of population aged 15 - 64 was 58.3%, by 0.2 percentage points above its value for the corresponding quarter of the previous year.
The unemployment rate was 12.3%, by 1.1 percentage points higher compared to the same quarter of 2011.
Discouraged persons aged 15 - 64 were 236.8 thousand, representing 14.4% of the total number of inactive persons in the same age group (1 645.2 thousand).
Employment
In the second quarter of 2012, the total number of employed persons (aged 15 years and over) was 2 913.7 thousand, representing 46.2% of population in the same age group. In comparison with the second quarter of 2011 the number of employed declined by 32.3 thousand (by 1.1%), while their proportion of the population aged 15 years and over remained almost unchanged.
Between second quarters of 2011 and 2012, a decrease of employment was observed only for men - the number of employed men decreased by 2.1%, and the share of those in employment among men aged 15 years and over decreased by 0.6 percentage points. In the second quarter of 2012, 1 528.7 thousand (52.5%) of all employed persons were men and 1 385.0 thousand (47.5%) were women.
Unemployment
In the second quarter of 2012 unemployed were 409.5 thousand persons, of whom 242.7 thousand were men and 166.8 thousand were women. In comparison with the second quarter of 2011 the number of unemployed rose by 10.0%.
The unemployment rate increased by 1.1 percentage points and in the second quarter of 2012 was 12.3%. The rate went up by 1.5 percentage points for men and by 0.7 percentage points for women, reaching 13.7% and 10.8% respectively.
The number of long-term unemployed was 227.9 thousand, which was 55.6% of all unemployed and compared to the second quarter of previous year rose by 9.8%. The long-term unemployment rate went up by 0.6 percentage points and reached 6.9% in the second quarter of 2012. This rate increased by 0.9 percentage points for men and by 0.3 percentage points for women, reaching 7.7% for men and 5.9% for women.
In the second quarter of 2012, previous employment experience had 338.5 thousand (82.7%) of all unemployed persons and 71.0 thousand (17.3%) were looking for their first job.
The unemployment rate for the population aged 15 - 29 was 20.7% (22.7% for men and 18.0% for women) and in comparison with the second quarter of 2011 it rose by 1.7 percentage points. The increase was entirely due to rising unemployment rate among men in this age group (by 3.2 percentage points).
More detailed data from the Labour Force Survey could be found on the NSI website: www.nsi.bg , section “Labour Market”, Labour Force Survey.