EAEU Reports Growth of Unemployment Rate

In terms of unemployment, Kazakhstan ranked third among the state-members of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). The number of unemployment claims officially registered in Kazakhstan amounted to 184,000 people as of July.

According to data summarized by the Eurasian Economic Commission analytics, almost 3.1 million people or 3.4% of the workforce have been jobless in Armenia, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Belarus as of the end of June. This figure is 2.9 times higher than in June of 2019.

As the EEC website shows, the unemployment claims have started to rise in the middle of March through the last report in June. The overall unemployment rate in the EAEU in the first quarter was 4.8%. The highest rate was recorded in Armenia, at 19.8%. The second place in terms of the number of unemployed people was Kyrgyzstan (5.5%), the third was Kazakhstan (4.8%) and Russia was the fourth (4.6%). The fifth member of EAEU, the Republic of Belarus, had the lowest unemployment rate of 4.1%.

Earlier, as Kursiv.kz wrote, those who lost their jobs amid the pandemic were not included in the official unemployment statistics. Later representatives of the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of Kazakhstan admitted that during the quarantine, more than 4.2 million citizens of Kazakhstan were temporarily unemployed.