Informal employment in the business sector increased further in 2022

Albania suffers from high levels of informality in the labor market, but the phenomenon is expanding in the country, according to official data from INSTAT.

In 2022, the percentage of informal employment in the non-agricultural sector is 28.2%, marking an increase of 1.2 percentage points compared to 2021, according to the latest publication "Albania in figures 2022".

Employment indicators improved further last year, but unpaid employment in family business expanded much more than paid employment.

In the Labor Force Survey, which measures the official indicator of employment, persons who are engaged in family businesses, but who are not paid, are also considered employed.

In 2022, 279,542 people were reported to be employed in the family business without pay, or 28 thousand people more than in 2021.

On the other hand, the number of salaried employees reached 610,774 people in 2022, or 12,898 people more than in 2021.

As can be seen, unpaid employment has grown twice as much as paid employment and is the largest contributor to employment growth last year.

Unpaid self-employed people in family businesses account for 20% of total employment and belong to the self-employed category. The number of self-employed persons reached about 408 thousand in 2022, but most of them, about 68%, were employed without pay.

According to the survey estimates for the year 2022, it turns out that for the age group of 15 years and older, 47.0% of employees are employed with a salary, 31.5% are self-employed (employer or self-employed without other employees) and 21 .5% are unpaid workers in the family business

Compared to 2021, employment has increased by 3.0%, while the unemployment rate for the 15-74 age group has decreased by 0.6 percentage points over the past year.

About 65.0% of the population aged 15-64 is employed, 8.2% is unemployed and 26.8% is economically inactive (outside the labor force).

Young people in the age group of 15-29 years who are neither employed nor continuing school or any training make up 25.2% of the total youth for the year 2022./MONITOR