About 70 000 Bulgarians made redundant in Q1 2010 - statistics office
About 70 000 Bulgarians have lost their jobs lost their jobs in the first quarter of 2010, raising the total number of people out of work to 341 000, or 10.2 per cent of those eligible to work, the National Statistics Institute said in a report on May 25 2010.Compared to figures from the first quarter of 2009, the number of employed has increased by about 118 800, the report said. Additionally, the number of people who feel pessimistic about their chances of finding work again has also increased, up to 226 500 people, or 66 500 more than last year.Of the total 3.011 million currently in employment, 3.4 per cent are employers, 7.9 per cent are self employed, 87.7 are employees - 71.9 per of all employees are in the private sector and the remainder are in the public sector, the report said.Statistics from Q1 indicate that nearly 60 per cent are employed in the service sector and about 34 per cent are in the industrial sector. The industrial sector, however, accounted for 13.7 per cent of redundancies as opposed to the first quarter of2009, the NSI said.About 6.3 per cent are employed in agriculture and forestry.