Macedonia Accused of Faking Fall in Jobless Rate

According to the state Employment Bureau, Macedonia's unemployment rate fell in the second quarter of this year by almost 1 per cent to 31.3 per cent compared to the same period last year.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski was quick to claim the fall as the result of his government's own work.

But opposition Social Democrats are querying the claim. They say the government is simply moving certain categories such as students off the jobless register to produce an artificial fall in the number claiming unemployment.

Social Democrat MP Cvetanka Ivanova says the fall was “illogical”, when official statistics also show “record lay-offs in industry”.

It made no sense that “in only one month the unemployment rate dropped by 10,000," she said.

Either way, about 300,000 out of an active working population of over 900,000 people remain without a job in Macedonia.

An MP from the ruling VMRO DPMNE party, Ilija Dimovski, told parliament on Thursday that his government had created some 80,000 jobs in the last few years.

Another MP, Aleksandar Spasenoski, agreed, adding that “the economy is far from perfect but it is far better than in the past”.

Spasenoski argued that in 1996, when the Social Democrats were in power, unemployment was even higher than it is today, at 36 per cent.

Following the 2009 global economic crisis Macedonia last year struggled to maintain minimal economic growth.

The country spent the first half of 2010 in recession, which reached minus 0.9 per cent, while many companies were forced to lay off workers due to the decreased demand.

The situation started to improve in the first half of this year when the State Statistical Office registered growth in GDP of over 5 per cent.