Bulgarian Unemployment Rate Declined to 7.25 Percent in July 2007

From Bloomberg today:


Bulgarian Unemployment Rate Declined to 7.25 Percent in July

Bulgaria's unemployment rate fell to 7.25 percent in July as hotels and farms hired more people.

The rate fell from 7.4 percent in June and 9 percent a year ago, the Employment Agency in Sofia said in an e-mail today. The number of jobless people in July fell to 268,446 or 6,374 people less than in June. Bulgaria's workforce was 3.42 million people in 2006, according to the statistics office.

The Balkan country's jobless rate fell to a 15-year low in May as foreign investment went into new businesses and the construction of hotels, housing and office buildings helped cut unemployment.

The average unemployment rate for the euro region was 6.9 percent in July, according to Bloomberg data.

A convergence program drawn up by the government and sent to the European Commission in January envisages keeping the unemployment rate below 10 percent through 2009 with economic growth of more than 6 percent a year.