The Labour Market Statistics

The labour market statistics provides information on the distribution of the workforce. They describe the situation and the dynamic of employment, unemployment that together make up the labour force that operates in a country. The numbers coming from the labour force survey classifies people, into employed, unemployed and economically inactive people.

Labour Force

The active population is composed by people that are either in work or actively seeking work that means they are potential workers and make up the labour force of a country. Therefore, the labour force (or the active population) is defined by the sum of employed and unemployed people. In 2021, the labour force in the country registers about 1411 thousand people.

The activity rate or labour force participation rate is calculated by dividing the active population by the population of the same age group. The indicator is a broad measure of the efficiency of an economy in engaging the population in some form of production activity. The indicator used to measure the rate of labour force participation in Albania reached 59.8 % during 2021 (67.2 % for men and 52.6 % for women).

Economically inactive people

The inactive population in 2021 is around 951 thousand including all the people who are classified as neither employed nor unemployed. They are the remaining part of the working age population after the labour force, or the active population, is subtracted from the population aged 15 and over.

The inactive people, or those outside the labour force, are people that do not work, neither seek or want a job for the following reasons: they are students; retired or disabled people; may be fulfilling domestic tasks; or not looking for a job because they believe they cannot find any (discouraged workers). The inactivity/ out of the labour force rate is calculated by dividing the inactive population by the population of the same age group. The inactivity rate is 39.1 % in 2021 (31.8 % for men and 46.2 % for women).

Both active and inactive populations are parts of the population in the working age. The labour force survey observes the population 15 years and over, that is the age people can start working legally. In 2021, the population 15 years and over is around 2362 thousand, that is 83.5 % of the total population.

To create various indicators of labour market, also other big groups of the population are taken into account like population aged 15-74 for the unemployment rate, 15-64 years old for employment rate, 15-24 or 15-29 years old for youth unemployment and so on.