Prague - The number of people who have been unemployed for more than a year in the Czech Republic decreased in the second quarter of 2011, according to data released by the Czech Statistical Office.
In the second quarter, the total number of long-term unemployed was 138,400, which is the lowest since the first quarter of 2010. More than half of them have only secondary education without a high-school leaving exam certificate. The second largest part of the long-term unemployed are people with primary education. Only 5,700 people with a university degree have been out of work for more than a year.
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Almost one third of the long-term unemployed are looking for work in the processing industry.
Women are more affected by the long-term unemployment - from the total number of 138,400, almost 72,000 were women.
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The regions most affected by the long-term unemployment are the Moravian-Silesian, Ústí nad Labem, and South Moravian regions. On the contrary, the Prague and Pardubice regions suffer the least from the problem.
The largest number, 160,000, was reported in the third quarter of 2010.
As in many other developed countries, the unemployment in the Czech Republic continued to increase even as the economy started to recover from the 2008/9 slump.
Unemployment in general, and long-term joblessness in particular have been a key problem in many developed countries since the economic downturn from 2008.
Head of US Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke said that the unemployment in the USA, which have remained at or above 9 percent since 2009, constitutes "a national crisis".
On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Spain's stubbornly high jobless rate of 21 percent - the highest figure in the EU - sparked massive protests by the so-called "indignant ones" earlier this year. Spain's youth movement inspired the recent Occupy Wall Street protest in the US.
Protests in the Czech Republic, with has an unemployment rate of 8.2 percent, has not been exceptionally violent, but nonetheless in June 2011 the country witnessed the largest strike in the last 20 years.
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