Addis Ababa's Unemployment rate stands at 23%, City officials claim

The unemployment rate of Addis Ababa decreased to 23.3 percent, the city Administration claims.

The city’s unemployment rate stood as 31.4 percent in 2007,  according to the news citing Foino Folla,  head the Finance and Economic Development Bureau.

The news didn’t provide a breakdown of the source of employments, except indicating that Micro and Small Enterprises take the lion’s share.

The official claimed that 130,000 people started Mirco and Small Enterprises in the last 5 years, for which the administration provided about  1.3 hectare land and 1.9 billion birr (roughly 100 mil dollars) loan. The official also claimed 360 Micro and Small Enterprises became “medium scale enterprises” in the same period.

It is not clear how and when the Administration conducted the survey to assess the city’s unemployment rate.

It is also curious that the Administration made the claim on April 12, just three days before voters cast their ballots to elect local and city council members.

The last official survey conducted in 2010 by the Central Statistics Agency indicates that Addis Ababa’s unemployment rate stood at 27.9% and 26.9% in the year 2009 and 2010, respectively.

The 2010 Urban Employment-Unemployment Survey(UEUS) was published by the Central Statistics Agency on March 2011.

You can find a summary of the Survey – national and regional unemployment rates, as well as the methodology – in this blog.

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Daniel Berhane

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