RIGA, Feb. 23 (Xinhua) -- Latvia's unemployment rate dropped by 0.4 percentage points in 2023 from a year before to 6.5 percent, according to a survey result released on Friday by the country's national statistics office.
Latvia's jobless population stood at 61,500, according to the statistics office.
In 2023, the country's employment rate grew by 0.3 percentage points year-on-year to 64.2 percent. But as the working-age population was decreasing, the number of employed persons declined by 2,000 to 884,2000.
Martins Abolins, an economist at Latvia's Citadele Bank, said that Latvia's unemployment rate remained low last year, although the weak growth and slight contraction of the economy were felt in the labor market with the unemployment rate edging up 0.1 percent year-on-year in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Abolins projected Latvia's economic growth to resume and the unemployment rate this year to be around 6.4 percent. ■
