Ekonomia

The pandemic raises unemployment among people with higher education

The pandemic raises unemployment among people with higher education

In Albania, unemployment is higher among well-educated people, especially those with a university degree, but the Covid-19 pandemic seems to have further worsened the employment prospects for this category.

According to official data of INSTAT, in the last quarter of 2020, the unemployment rate among people with higher education aged 15-64 reached 14% from 12.6% in the same period of 2019. Unemployment in this category of labor force with higher education increased by 1. 4 percentage points.

Growth was also present in other categories with lower education, but milder than in the more educated. In the labor force with secondary education, the unemployment rate in the same period was 13.9%, with an annual increase of 0.7 percentage points.

The less educated have the best performance in the labor market. The unemployment rate in this category was 9.9%, well below the overall unemployment rate which was 11.8% in the last quarter of the year. The crisis is also seen to have been milder at this level of education, as official statistics show that unemployment in this category increased by only 0.2%.

All over the world, the pandemic crisis hit the less educated and low-wage sections of the population. But in Albania, due to the high informality of the labor market, the impact of the pandemic on employment is not complete.

The high level of unemployment in the educated groups of the labor force highlights two basic weaknesses of the Albanian economy.

First, the economic model is based on non-productivity sectors that have free labor at the core of their activity and not skills.

The second. the albanian education system still has a high gap with the needs of the labor market. The Albanian economy is dominated by agriculture, services and trade, but higher studies are oriented towards social science, law and economics.

As a result of these developments, the job offer, in 90% of cases, is addressed to an unskilled workforce, for professions such as tailoring, bars and restaurants, construction laborer, etc.

A recent study by the International Employment Organization (ILO) reported that informality in the labor market in Albania is about 60% and is mainly focused on Agriculture and the self-employed.

* Received from Monitor.al