Urban unemployment rate higher than rural

Urban areas are more affected by unemployment than the countryside. At the same time, there are more unemployed men than women. To illustrate, currently in Moldova there are 72 thousands unemployed people, 57.1% of them reside in urban areas and 61.7% of all unemployed persons are men. According to the National Statistics Bureau, 77.3% of all unemployed people have work experience; the average unemployed period is 19 months. One in three unemployed persons has been jobless for 12 months or more, one in five has been unemployed for 24 months and more and 26.% of them are young people aged 15 to 24. At the moment when the research was conducted, only 0.7% of all the jobless people were taking classes or courses of some kind. The unemployed rate reached 5.7%. The gender disparity in the unemployment rate was significant: men - 6.8% and women – 4.5%. In urban areas the unemployment rate was 7.1%, while in rural areas it constituted 4.5%. The unemployment rate among young persons was 13.9%. In addition, 57.1% of persons aged 15 and above were inactive, including discouraged people and persons who were declared to be working or looking for a job abroad. There have been reported 335 thousands people working or looking for a job abroad, which represents 20% of the population aged 15 and above. Two thirds of the people abroad are men, and 2/3 of all the people abroad hail from rural areas. Data presented in the current report doesn’t refer to the situation in Transnistria and in Tighina.