“The figures are down for all categories of jobseekers,” Adem said in a press release on 21 January. While the number of newly registered jobseekers slightly increased over January--a trend that had --the overall number of unemployed residents has gone down from 16,403 to 15,470 in one month.

The positive evolution--a low that had last been reached in 2009--applied to women (-23,3%) and men (-21,1%) alike, as well as different age groups. Under30s had the smallest number of unemployed (2,960), followed by the 30-44 age group (5,814 unemployed), and the over45s group, which counted 6,696 jobseekers, a decrease of 16,6% over the past twelve months.

Long-term unemployment numbers, while accounting for close to half of all cases (49,3%), , shrunk by 21,9% between January 2021 and 2022. Currently, 5,500 people are counted in this category, after being registered with the Adem for over twelve months.

Meanwhile, the number of job openings declared has nearly doubled in comparison to January 2021, as 4,083 adverts were posted (+46,2% over twelve months) in January 2022. As was the case last year, IT-related jobs, as well as accounting and secretarial experience were sought after the most.

At the end of January 2022, 10,769 jobs were available in total, a 63,6% increase compared to last year, when the second year of the pandemic had just begun.