Employees with insurance, annual increase of 13,000 people in the third quarter

2023-12-21 08:54:00, Ekonomi CNA

The number of employees paying social insurance reached 737,421 in the third quarter of the current year, experiencing an increase of 13 thousand people or an expansion of 1.8 percent compared to the same period last year.

According to INSTAT data, the contributors increased even compared to the second 3 months of 2023.

More detailed data show that the largest contribution was made by employment in the private sector. Privately employed contributors reached 558,346 people in July-September 2023, with an increase of 2.9 percent or over 16 thousand more people in the insurance scheme than in the same 3-month period of 2022. In contrast, employment in the state has decreased during the reference period by over 3 thousand people or 1.6 percent less than the third quarter of 2022.

Official data on employment in our country is generated from two sources. Administrative data that refer to employees who pay insurance and data from the Labor Force Survey that considers as employed persons who performed a job against a salary or benefit during the reference week when the survey was conducted. This survey is conducted once every three months in about 8,000 households across the country.

The data originating from the Survey showed that the employed persons in the third quarter of this year were 1,338,022, while the employed with insurance were 734 thousand or only 55 percent of those who reported that they are at work. This difference remained the same as a year ago.

Employees with insurance, annual increase of 13,000 people in the third quarter

As the country's economy is growing at a faster pace than the last decade, slow steps are being taken in the direction of informality in the labor market and informality in general.

The labor force is on the verge of depletion due to falling births and high emigration, so reducing informality remains the main source of generating income for the future pension scheme, which is necessary for a growing army of pensioners.

On the contrary, 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, INSTAT reported in the publication "Albania in figures 2022".

Employment indicators have improved in recent years, but unpaid employment in family businesses has expanded much more than paid employment, especially last year.

Sources from the market claim that the informality in the labor market was fueled by the increase three times in a row within the year of the minimum wage, bringing it to 40 thousand lek currently from 30 thousand that was at the beginning of 2022. Given that the increase of the minimum wage was not driven by productivity, informality in employment increased especially in self-employment to avoid the obligations arising from income tax from wages./ Monitor.al