In the 1st quarter, the unemployment rate dropped to 6.4%, with the short-term unemployed decreasing the most
At the beginning of 2022, the number of unemployed people decreased by 15 thousand year-on-year; the decrease in the number of unemployed people and of the unemployment rate occurred in all regions. However, the number of long-term unemployed continued to increase.
The number of unemployed persons during the 1st quarter of 2022 according to the Labor Force Survey (LFSS) 1) reached 174.9 thousand persons. The number of unemployed 2) was lower by 8.1% year-on-year. Compared to the previous quarter, the number of unemployed after seasonal adjustment decreased by 3% to 177.5 thousand persons.
Compared to the corresponding period last year, the unemployment rate dropped by 0.7 percentage point (p.p.) to 6.4%.
It is not possible to compare the current data in a longer time series, i.e. with the corresponding period of 2019, because since 2021, the change in the new EU legislation led to significant methodological changes and the data are not compatible with data for the previous periods. In order to provide basic information on the labor market, year-on-year indices were separately recalculated as much as possible, but not other or older LFS data.
In the current first quarter of 2022, the long-term unemployed (who did not work for 1 year and longer) consisted of more than 116 thousand persons, which represented almost 36% year-on-year growth. The share of the long-term unemployed was much higher than a year ago. Even in the first quarter of 2022, unemployed people for 1 year and longer represented only 45% of all the unemployed, currently it exceeded 66%. Since the beginning of 2022, short-term unemployment decreased by almost half, with almost 59 thousand persons still out of work for less than 12 months.
The decrease in the number of the unemployed occurred only in selected age groups; the opposite trend was the increase in the number of unemployed in the group of young people aged 25-34, in the group of 50-54 years, as well as in the group of people just before retirement (60 and over).
From the perspective of the last employer's economic activity, the most people recently worked in industry, trade and construction. However, there was a year-on-year decrease in the number of unemployed in these groups. So far, 49.6 thousand people have never worked, which represented more than a quarter of the unemployed, and this group of unemployed increased during the first quarter of 2022.
From a regional perspective, the number of unemployed in the 1st quarter of 2022 decreased year-on-year in all the eight regions of the SR. The relatively highest number of unemployed decreased year-on-year in Žilinský kraj (a decrease by 22.4%) and in Bratislavský kraj (a decrease by 18.7%). On the contrary, only a minimal decrease in the number of unemployed occurred in Banskobystrický kraj by 1%. The highest number of unemployed continued to be in Prešovský kraj (more than 40 000 persons), in Košický kraj (almost 35 000 persons) and in Banskobystrický kraj (more than 31 000 persons).
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The highest unemployment rate was in Prešovský kraj (11.6%), just below the 10% level was the unemployment rate in Banskobystrický kraj and Košický kraj. On the contrary, the lowest unemployment rate was in Bratislavský kraj (2.5%) and in Trenčiansky kraj (3.2%). The unemployment rate decreased in all regions of the Slovak Republic, relatively most dynamically in Žilinský kraj, where the unemployment rate dropped by 1.4 percentage points to 4.3%.
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