Bulgaria - Unemployment

For Bulgaria, the labor force survey is an important source of information of the state and tendencies of the labour market, as the main purpose of the survey is to provide information on the economic activity of the population (persons aged 15 to 74, living in non-institutional households) on the most important characteristics of employed and unemployed persons and persons not in the labor force.

Moody's Analytics performs select improvements to this dataset.

Active:

• Measurements:
  • Thousands of persons (Ths. #)
  • Percent (%)
• Adjustment: Not seasonally adjusted (NSA)
• Native frequency: Quarterly
• Start dates:
  • 1993Q3
  • 2000Q1
  • 2003Q1
  • 2010Q1
• Geo coverage:
  • Country
  • Region/NUTS 1 area (IBGR_^^^^)
  • Planning region/NUTS 2 area (IBGR_^^^)
  • Oblast/NUTS 3 area (IBGR_^^)

Predecessors:

• Monthly - 2000m1 to 2010m6
• Annual for NUTS 1 areas - 2008 to 2014

The source writes:

Data is collected using paper questionnaires and through personal interviews with persons 15 years or older living in households that are included in the sample. For each person, the sample period is one week. The sample used is a two-stage stratified cluster sample. Close to 20 thousand households are included in the sample. 

Change in method

In 2021Q1, the source implemented "Integrated European Social Statistics (IESS)," impacting the ILO-definition unemployment rate. Data before 2021Q1 has not been revised. There is a break notation in the "source" metadata.

Moody's Analytics supplements

For key series, we have back-extended series over the interval 1993Q1 to 1999Q4, and constructed seasonally adjusted counterparts.

Definitions

Employed

Persons of 15 years of age and over who during the reference period: performed some work for at least one hour for payment in cash or in kind or other income; did not work but had a job or an enterprise, business from which they were temporarily absent due to leave, illness, full-paid maternity leave, bad weather, strike or other similar reasons.

Employment rate

Ratio between employed population and the total population of the same age.

Unemployed

Persons aged 15 to 74 who did not work at all during the reference period, were actively seeking work within the preceding four weeks, including the reference and were available to start working within two weeks following the reference one.

Unemployment rate

Ratio between unemployed persons and the economically active population (labor force).

Previously released data are not usually revised. Benchmark revisions may be conducted after a population census.

Further reading

At the source:

• Labour Force Survey methodology (pdf, English)
• Rates for statistical regions (dead link)

At IMF (SDDS Plus):

• Labor market: Employment
• Labor market: Unemployment