August 14 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria’s unemployment rate dropped to 4.2% in the second quarter of 2019 from 5.5% in the comparable period of last year, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) said on Wednesday.
Youth unemployment (age bracket 15-29 years), eased to 6.9% in the April-June period of 2019 from 9.3% last year, NSI said in a quarterly labour force survey.
Long-term unemployment rate, or people who have been without a job for more than a year, was 2.5%, or 84,500 people.
The employment rate among people aged 15 to 64 rose by 2.8 percentage points year-on-year to 70.7% in the second quarter.
The share of economically active people aged 15-64 grew by 1.3 pp to 71.9%.
There were 1.2 million economically inactive people aged 15-64 in the first quarter, or 26.2% of the population in this age group. Of them 61,200 were discouraged persons.