One in five employees in Albania worked without pay in 2025

2026-06-23 14:52:00, Ekonomi CNA

The labor market in Albania continues to be characterized by the high share of unpaid employment and informality, despite the slight decline in unemployment during 2025.

According to data published by INSTAT today, last year there were 1.17 million employed people over the age of 15, 0.4% less than the year before. However, the employment structure shows that a significant portion of the employed do not have a regular paid employment relationship.

Only 48% of employees are paid employees, while 30.9% are self-employed. Another 21.1% are classified as unpaid workers in family businesses, meaning that more than one in five employees work without receiving a salary.

The phenomenon particularly affects women. According to the Labor Force Survey, 29.3% of employed women are unpaid workers in family businesses, compared to 14.4% of men. This means that women are about twice as likely as men to work unpaid.

Informality remains another weakness. In 2025, informal employment in the non-agricultural sector was 21.8%, meaning that more than one in five employees in these sectors do not pay insurance. Although the indicator has decreased by 2.9 percentage points compared to 2024, the level remains significant.

The data also show that agriculture continues to play an important role in employment. The agricultural sector represents 33.8% of the employed, while services 46.9%. Almost half of the employed 45.3% are concentrated in the group of “skilled workers” in agriculture and trade.

A significant portion of employment is also related to people of retirement age. The number of employed people over 65 years of age increased to 130,274 from 119,862 a year earlier. According to the methodology of the International Labor Organization (ILO), most of them are self-employed in agriculture and are considered employed even when they produce mainly for self-consumption.

On the other hand, unemployment indicators continued to improve slightly. The number of unemployed people fell to 107,548, while the official unemployment rate decreased to 8.4%, from 8.5% a year earlier. However, unemployment remains higher among women (9.7%) than among men (7.3%).

Unemployment among young people aged 15-24 was 21.5%, while 72.7% of the unemployed have been looking for work for more than a year, indicating that long-term unemployment remains a significant challenge for the Albanian labor market. /Monitor