Bulgarian official unemployment rate 9.56%

The Bulgarian unemployment rate stood at 9.56 percent in June, the employment agency announced on Tuesday, basing its figures on new census data. The agency said the number of people registered as unemployed was 318,337 in June, down from 328,533 in May. In May, official data had put the unemployment rate at 8.87 percent. Calculated based on new census figures, which showed a fall in the workforce, the jobless rate was in reality 10.01 percent however. Bulgaria's actively employed population currently stands at 3,282,740 people -- according to the census conducted in February -- down by 374,653 people compared to the last census in 2001, on which the employment agency had until now calculated its unemployment figures. The jobless rate in Bulgaria rose to 9.47 percent in 2010 from 7.59 percent in 2009 and 6.31 percent in 2008.