Yesterday, Prime Minister Edi Rama announced that his government has created 225,000 new jobs since 2013, not far from his initial promise of creating 300,000 new jobs.
During a press conference, he said there are official 225,000 more people registered in the labour registry.
“We promised 300,000 jobs. Today referring to the figures in the labour registry, in 2013 there were 473,5065 registered persons and at the end of 2019 there were 698,235 registered persons.”
Rama’s figures do not take into account those that lost their jobs during 2020 following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Another issue is that in 2017, Arben Ahmetaj, the Minister of Finance said that the promise of 300,000 new jobs was fulfilled that year. He said that by 2017, the government had created 300,000 new jobs, not 225,000.
In an interview with Sokol Balla in January 2017, Ahmetaj stated :
“In total, there are over 300,000 new jobs created in the economy.”
Ahmetaj also reinforced his statement in December 2020, when he stated again that the Rama government has created 300,000 jobs.
It’s also worth considering that between 2010 and 2019, some 193,000 Albanians applied for asylum in EU countries and some 360,699 left in 2019 alone. Many of these went to pursue work and education.
