YEREVAN, July 26./ARKA/. Unemployment rate in Armenia went 1.3% down in the first quarter of this year, compared with the same period a year earlier, to 16.5%, according to World Bank’s JobTrends study.
The study showed that average salary grew 1.6% in the country in Jan-March 2012, while at the same period in 2011 it contracted by 5.5%.
Employment rate in Armenia dropped 8.1% in Jan-March 2012 against 0.7% decline in Jan-March 2011.
The country’s GDP grew 5.5% – the same result was recorded in 2011.
WB experts say that labor markets of Europe and Central Asia, where Armenia is included, continued regaining momentum after flagging in 2009 because of the financial crisis.
In the first quarter of this year, unemployment rate averaged 7.1% in 12 European countries under review after dropping 1 percentage point, compared with the same period a year before.
Labor market rally was visible especially in Lithuania, Moldova, Romania and Russia. In all these countries that had been badly affected by the crisis unemployment rate fell 1.2%.
JobTrends is a regular series of studies which include monitoring of labor market developments in emerging economies. These are joint studies of World Bank’s human development, poverty reduction and economic management departments. -0—