According to the survey results, among the 6,812,978 persons 16 years old and above living in private households, about 3,600,916 persons representing 52.9 percent were in the labour force, either employed (2,959,965) or unemployed (640,951).
The remaining 3,212,062 persons were outside the labour force including some 1,691,727 persons engaged wholly or mostly in subsistence foodstuff production, not classified as employment according to the new international standards on statistics of work, employment and labour underutilization.
The unemployment rate stood at 17.8 percent, indicating that roughly for six persons in the labour force there was one person unemployed.
The unemployment rate obtained in August 2017 was 1 percentage point lower than the one obtained in August 2016. The unemployment rate was higher among women (21.0 percent) than among men (15.2 percent) and higher among young people (21.7) than among adults (14.6percent).
It was also higher in the urban areas (18.5 percent) than in the rural areas (17.5 percent).
This situation is the same as the one in February 2017, where the unemployment rate was higher in the urban areas (18.1 percent) than in rural areas (16.2 percent).
The median duration of seeking for employment was only 3.0 months but about 20.1 percent of the unemployed were seeking employment for 12 months or more (long-term unemployment).