Seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rises to 5.7 pct in February

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percentage points in February to 5.7 pct from 5.6 pct in the previous month, according to data from the National Institute of Statistics (INS) released on Tuesday. The female unemployment rate was 0.2 percentage points higher than that of male unemployment, 5.8 pct for women to 5.6 pct for men. The estimated number of the unemployed aged 15-74 for February 2021 was 478,000 people, up from the previous month (474,000 people). The adult unemployment rate (ages 25-74) was estimated at 4.6 pct for February 2021 (4.7 pct for men and 4.5 pct for women). The number of unemployed people aged 25-74 accounts for 75.8 pct of the total number of unemployed estimated for February 2021. "Starting with 2021, the methodology of the Household Labor Force Survey (the primary source of data in this press release) has been revised to meet the requirements of the new European regulations entered into force on 1 January 2021. These changes have a significant impact on estimates - especially on the number of the employed population (and implicitly on the number of the active population - which is the denominator of the indicator "unemployment rate"). For this reason the provisional data published for January - February 2021 are not comparable with those published for previous periods," states INS.AGERPRES(RO - author: Andreea Marinescu, editor: Mariana Nica; EN - author: Simona Iacob, editor: Maria Voican)