MINSK, 25 January (BelTA) – According to a sample survey of Belarusian households taken for the sake of studying population employment problems, the employment-to-population ratio totaled 67.9% in January-October 2020, the National Statistics Committee told BelTA.
The employment-to-population ratio measures the proportion of the country's working-age population (ages 15 to 64) that is employed. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate, which is measured in line with methods of the International Labor Organization, totaled 4.1% of the workforce size in Q4 2020.
To compare, in Q3 2020 the employment-to-population ratio totaled 68.2%, with the unemployment rate at 4%. These figures stood at 67% and 4.2% in Q2 2020, 66% and 4.1% in Q1 2020, and 67.7% and 4% in Q4 2019.
Sample surveys are conducted in line with International Labor Organization methods every quarter in order to get information about the workforce size, the number of employed and unemployed Belarusians, information about people, who are outside the workforce due to their gender, age, education, and other demographic and social and economic parameters. People aged 15 to 74 are polled in all the oblasts of the country and the city of Minsk using a sampling method. Those polled represent 0.6% of the total number of Belarusian households while the results are consequently extrapolated onto the entire population of the surveyed age.
Specialists stressed that the workforce size as measured by the sample survey can differ from current estimates. A number of reasons are to blame. First, employed Belarusians are registered depending on their place of residence instead of their place of work. Second, current estimates do not include people, who are absent from their place of employment due to maternity leaves, active-service military, and people, who work outside the country, into the workforce size.
