Unemployment in Azerbaijan keeps decreasing
By Sara Israfilbayova
The number of economically active population in Azerbaijan made up 5.12 million people as of August 1, 4.87 million of which are employed.
The State Statistics Committee of Azerbaijan reported that as of July 1 the number of employed amounted to 1.55 million people, including 885,700 people involved in the public sector of the economy, 660,500 in the non-state sector, 33,700 people in the oil sector of the economy and 1.51 million in the non-oil sector.
As of August 1, 36,100 people were granted official unemployment status by the employment services, 37.1 percent of which were women. The average amount of unemployment insurance benefits is 273.9 manats ($161).
A new Law “On Unemployment Insurance” was approved on June 2017 and has come into force since January 1, 2018.
The Law is aimed to establish relations and new financing mechanisms based on a risk transfer in the labor market, compensate lost wages of insured persons and ensure the social protection of the population through preventive measures to prevent the occurrence of unemployment.
The Law is intended to apply to those, whose employment agreements have been terminated due to liquidation of the state authority or legal entity or the redundancy. The Law will not apply to those holding political office.
The insurance will enable the unemployed to get payments over a definite period. In order to be eligible for an insurance payment, the unemployed shall be registered within the State Employment Fund. The amount of payments will be differentiated depending on the length of insurance record and the amount of past average monthly salary.
Unemployment rate in Azerbaijan is 5 percent, while the poverty level equals to 5.3 percent.
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Sara Israfilbayova is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Sara_999Is
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