1. General Methodology
  2. Labor market participation

Labor market participation

Access to the labor market is essential for individuals' socioeconomic status and mobility prospects. In majoritarian states, access to and participation in the labor market is often structurally skewed in favor of the dominant nation, creating inherent disadvantages for minority members.

Unemployment rates measure

In Figure 3, we present the unemployment rates of minority groups compared to majorities in Estonia, Latvia, Slovakia, and Romania, as they appear in the Household Labor Force Survey, a leading cross-national survey in Europe. The nationality variable (referring to ethnicity) is not publicly available in standard database versions; therefore, we present data obtained through special requests addressed to national statistical offices.

Figure 3: Unemployment rates by ethnicity according to Household Labor Force Survey

Unemployment rates by ethnicity
Description: The data in this image is pictured in four separate charts. It demonstrates that despite overall unemployment rates falling for everyone over the 2010 to 2020 period, with a recent spike since 2019, Russian speakers in both Latvia and Estonia consistently have higher rates of unemployment than Latvians and Estonians, respectively. For Slovakia and Romania, unemployment rates from 2006-2012 stayed relatively constant. In Slovakia, Hungarians have consistently higher rates of unemployment than Slovakians in the general population. Romania is the only state where the Hungarian minority has shown rates of unemployment which have been lower, higher, and equally as high as the Romanian majority.