February 14 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.6% in the fourth quarter of 2017 from 6.7% in the same period last year, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) said on Wednesday.
The employment rate among people aged 15 to 64 rose by 3.5 percentage points to 67.5% in the October-December period, the NSI said in a quarterly labour force survey.
The share of economically active people aged 15-64 rose by 3.6 percentage points year-on-year to 71.6% in the fourth quarter of 2017.
There were 1.3 million economically inactive persons aged 15-64 in the fourth quarter, or 28.4% of the population in this age group. Of them, 98,300 were discouraged persons.
Youth unemployment, covering persons in the age bracket 15-29 years, dropped to 9.4% in the period under review from 12.4% a year earlier.
Long-term unemployment rate - covering people who have been without a job for more than a year - fell to 3.1% from 3.9%.