Unemployment rate reaches 7.2 percent in Q1 2014

Newsroom 26/06/2014 | 08:06

The unemployment rate in Romania stood at 7.2 percent in Q1 2014 and the employment rate of the working-age population (aged 15 to 64) was 59.5 percent, according to the data released on Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INS).

By gender, the spread between the two rates of unemployment was 2 percentage points (8.1 percent for men versus 6.1 percent for women), and by residential areas, 2.4 percentage points (8.3 percent for urban areas, versus 5.9 percent in rural areas).

The unemployment rate reached its highest level (25.7 percent) among youths (aged 15 to 24). The employment rate of the population aged 20 to 64 was 64.2 percent, at a distance of 5.8 percentage points from the national target of 70 percent, set in the context of the Europe 2020 Strategy.

In Q1 2014, Romania’s active population was 9.058 million people, of whom 8.402 million people were employed and 656,000 were unemployed. The employment rate of the working-age population in Q1 2014 was 59.5 percent. The employment rate was higher for men (66.9 percent compared to 52 percent for women) and for the people residing in urban areas (59.6 percent from 59.4 percent in rural areas). The employment rate of young people (aged 15 to 24) stood at 20.6 percent.