THE REGISTERED unemployment rate in Slovakia rose by 0.59 percentage points month-on-month in April, to stand at 10.92 percent at the end of the month.
“It is the smallest increase over the last four months,” said Ján Sihelský, director general of the Office for Labour, Social Affairs and Family (ÚPSVAR), as quoted by the SITA newswire.
Nevertheless, this is the highest figure to be reported in Slovakia since June 2006. In year-on-year terms, the joblessness rate in Slovakia increased by 3.54 percentage points. At the end of April, regional labour offices registered 289,340 unemployed people who were able to take up a job immediately.
Compared with the end of March, the figure represented a rise of 15,561 people; and 96,822 from the same period a year ago.
According to the ÚPSVAR head, two in three regional labour offices expect a moderate increase in the unemployment rate, while the rest expect stabilisation, SITA wrote.
Announced layoffs have put almost 18,300 jobs in danger, according to Sihelský, who said that Slovakia is now recording the seventh-highest joblessness rate in the European Union, with the proviso that four of the EU’s 27 members did not provide data to the European Statistics Office, Eurostat.
The highest proportion of jobless people in Slovakia in April was in Banská Bystrica Region (17.66 percent) and in Prešov Region (16.27 percent).
These regions also posted the most significant year-on-year increases in unemployment level: Prešov by 5.14 percentage points, and Banská Bystrica by 4.3 percentage points.
The total number of unemployed people in Slovakia exceeded 325,000 in April 2009, which is about 102,000 more than a year earlier.
