August 14 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria’s unemployment rate dropped to 5.5% in the second quarter of 2018 from 6.3% in the same period last year, the National Statistical Institute (NSI) said on Tuesday.
Youth unemployment, covering persons in the age bracket 15-29 years, dropped to 9.3% in the period under review from 9.5% in the second quarter of last year, NSI said in a quarterly labour force survey.
Long-term unemployment rate - covering people who have been without a job for more than a year - was 3.2% in the second quarter, 0.3 percentage points lower than in the same period of last year.
The employment rate among people aged 15 to 64 rose by 0.7 percentage points year-on-year to 67.9% in the second quarter.
The share of economically active people aged 15-64 increased by 1.4 percentage points year-on-year to 70.6% in the review period.
There were 1.28 million economically inactive persons aged 15-64 in the second quarter, or 28.2% of the population in this age group. Of them, 84,400 were discouraged persons.