site.btaBulgaria's Unemployment Further Down on Q3 of 2025

At 3.4%, Bulgaria's unemployment rate in July-September 2025 was 0.2 percentage points lower than the 3.6% in the third quarter of 2024, the National Statistical Institute reported on Friday, citing the results of its latest Labour Force Survey.

The comparable figure for the first quarter of 2025 was 3.9%, which in turn was 1.1 percentage points lower than the year-earlier level.

The employment rate for the population aged 15 - 64 decreased by 0.3 percentage points in comparison with the same quarter of 2024 and stood at 71.4%. The activity rate of the population aged 15 - 64 was 73.9%, by 0.5 percentage points lower compared to the third quarter of 2024.

In the third quarter of 2025, the unemployed persons numbered 104,500, of whom 59,500 (57.0%) were men and 45,000 (43.0%) were women. The unemployment rate was 3.4%, 3.7% for men and 3.1% for women. Broken down by educational attainment, 19.4% of the unemployed had tertiary education, 56.4% upper secondary, and 24.4% lower secondary education or less.

In July-September 2025, as many as 42,500 persons were long-term unemployed (out of work for one year or more), accounting for 40.7% of the jobless total. The long-term unemployment rate was 1.4%. First-time job seekers represented 21% of the total of 22,000 persons.

In the third quarter of 2025, the youth unemployment rate (age group 15 - 29) was 8.7% (8.4% for men and 9.2% for women). Compared to the 8% for the same period of 2024, this rate increased by 1.7 percentage points (by 1.4 percentage points for men and by 2.1 percentage points for women).

The employed persons totalled 2,956,000 in the third quarter of 2025, of whom 1,563,000 were men and 1,392,900 were women. The service sector employed 2,027,500 (68.6% of the total), the industry sector 786,700 (26.6%), and agriculture, forestry and fishing 141,800 (4.8%). By comparison, in the second quarter of 2024 the employed persons numbered 2,934,100 (67.3% in services, 27.4% in industry, and 5.3% in agriculture, forestry and fishing).