For Q2 2023, the number of people who worked less than 30 hours per week declined by 13.6% (44,000) from Q2 2022 with a record of 280,400 people. This group accounted for 1.7% of total employment, after it declined by 0.4 p.p compared to the same quarter of the preceding year.
A similar trend was observed on a quarterly basis as the number of employed people working less than 30 hours per week rose by 2.3% (6,200) while the share of this category to total employed people remained similar as the previous quarter.
In line with this, the rate of time-related underemployment declined by 0.2 p.p on a yearly basis to 1.2%. The number of people in time-related underemployment declined by 12.5% (26,500) compared to the same quarter of 2022 to record 186,300 people. However, for quarter-on-quarter registered, the number of time-related underemployment grew by 6.7% (11,700) while the rate increased by 0.1 p.p.
Another facet of underemployment assessed by the survey was skill, or those who desired to change their current employment situation in order to fully exploit their professional talents. Given the availability of data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), this indicator is calculated using proxy variables of occupation and educational attainment.
As of Q2 2023, the total number of people in skill-related underemployment rose by 6.4% gaining another 115,000 as against the same quarter of the previous year, to record 1.91 million people. As such, the share of tertiary-educated employed people working in semi-skilled and low-skilled occupations increased by 0.7 p.p to 37.4%.
Compared to those who were in skill-related underemployment also posted an increase of 0.4% (7,400) while the rate remained unchanged. Despite the slight increase in number, the fact remains that more than one-third of tertiary-educated employed people are prevalent in semi-skilled and low skilled occupations.
Lastly, the number of unemployed people declined by 9.5% (60,000) from the same quarter of 2022 which recorded a total of 581,000 unemployed people in Q2 2023. Consequently, the national unemployment rate stood at 3.5% after registering a year-on-year drop of 0.4 p.p.
The unemployment situation also improved compared to Q1 2023, with the number of unemployed people lowering by 0.9% or 5,500 despite the unemployment rate remaining unchanged from the previous quarter.
As for the population outside of the labour force as against a year ago, the number in Q2 2023 declined by 1.1% (78,300) to record 7.18 million people. This decline, together with an increase in the labour force during the quarter, indicates a shift from the inactivity group into the labour market.
