Study: Albania, in place against informality in employment, the 3-fold phenomenon of the region

While the countries of the region have taken steps forward in the fight against informality in the labor market, Albania is standing in the last place, according to the study on the progress of the labor market in the Western Balkans that was recently conducted by the Vienna International Institute for Economic Studies.

As can be seen from the graph below in North Macedonia and Serbia, informality in the labor market has gradually decreased year after year, to 12-13% of total employment in 2021 from 22% in 2014.

With one action in the years 2015-2016, Albania somewhat reduced informality in the labor market, bringing the indicator to 35% from more than 50% that was in 2014.

The graph of the Vienna experts shows that from 2017 to 2021 there is no improvement, on the contrary there is a slight upward trend of informality in the labor market.

Experts from Vienna state that informal employment has continued to decline in the countries of the Western Balkans in 2021.

Only Albania, North Macedonia and Serbia publish official data on informal employment, calculated from the Labor Force Survey, including the self-employed in unregistered businesses, paid workers without a contract and unpaid family workers.

"In the last decade, informality has a downward trend in all three countries, but in recent years the developments have been different.

In North Macedonia and Serbia, informal employment fell in both 2020 and 2021, while it stagnated in Albania.

North Macedonia and Serbia had a similar level of informal employment (about 12-13% of the total), while in Albania, the weight was significantly higher (37%), the study emphasizes.

Unemployment remains a major problem for young people in the region. In 2021, unemployment of the age group (15-24) was over 25% in all countries and up to 38% in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo.

Since the pandemic, different age groups in the region have witnessed different trends in unemployment dynamics. In Kosovo and Serbia, the unemployment rate has dropped significantly among young people (15-24 years old), where Kosovo had an impressive drop of 11.4 percentage points.

In contrast, in Albania and North Macedonia, the most significant improvement was observed in middle age, but not for young people.

In Montenegro, the only group that experienced a drop in unemployment was the elderly (55-64 years old), while young people saw a 12 percentage point increase in their unemployment rate. Monitor