Unemployment in Angola drops to less than 30% in the last quarter of 2022

The economic studies office of Banco Fomento Angola (BFA) considers that the unemployment rate in Angola should again be below 30% in the last quarter of 2022, the lowest since 2019.

“Unemployment should break 30% again in the fourth quarter”, reads the note sent to customers, and to which Lusa had access, which comes after the disclosure, by the National Institute of Statistics of Angola, of a reduction of 4.1 percentage points in the third quarter of 2022, compared to the same period last year, and 0.2 percentage points compared to the second quarter, when the rate was 30.2%.

“The recovery of the economy is leading to the beginning of a more persistent decline in the unemployment rate in Angola,” adds the note, which warns, however, that the economy of the largest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa remains markedly informal.

“The informality of the Angolan economy remains very relevant – in the 3rd quarter of the current year, the number of people employed in the informal market increased by 433,000 (+5.0% over the same period) to 9.1 million, representing approximately 80% of the total number of employees in Angola,” say the economists.

For 2023, BFA’s economic studies office predicts that the downward trend will continue, which also appears in a context of recovery of the Angolan economy, which is expected to grow by around 3% this year.

“Our forecast is that the situation in the labor market will continue to improve, with the unemployment rate settling between 28 and 29%, below the minimum of 29% recorded at the beginning of the statistical series, in the second quarter of 2019,” conclude the analysts.

The unemployment rate in Angola is one of the highest among African countries, slightly below the figures recorded in Nigeria (33.3%) and South Africa (32.9%), according to data compiled by the financial information agency Bloomberg.

Driven by the five years of economic recession and the impact of the pandemic, the rate rose to 34% in the third quarter of 2020 and 2021, and averaged 32% in 2020 and 2021, covering a third of people available for work.

With information from Notícias ao Minuto

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