“168 Xam” newspaper writes.
“A turbulent period for statisticians has begun. They should manage to publish the last year of 2018. collected their data about. Our authorities, of necessity, will almost ignore all publications. It will ignore it, pretending that it is old and almost out-of-date data. And those in charge of statistics will perceive this attitude as an instruction to “pimp up” this year’s data a little more.
To say that it is something new and unexpected would be a mistake. In the same way, before, the authorities ignored the statistical data that did not suit their ideas. For example, no official has ever released data on delinquency if it has increased. This time too, the public will not learn about the violations from the public speeches or social media posts of officials, that in 2017 in 2018, 22 thousand 551 cases were recorded against 20 thousand 284 cases of crime. This is still nothing. The public will also not know that in the report on enforcement of judicial acts, strange numbers are recorded in front of the line “Amounts seized by property enforcement proceedings in criminal cases for the benefit of the RA state budget”. The RA budget received 18.1 million drams in 2017, and only 10.8 million drams in 2018, contrary to expectations, promises and official reports.
In the same way, it is hard to imagine that any official representing the healthcare sector or the government would make a social media post that there is a shortage of hospital beds in Armenia. Instead of 12,457 beds in 2017, 12,153 beds are “counted” in the 2018 report. It is not just about the data recording decline, decrease and reduction. It is not difficult to imagine that the authorities will not be proud in public, making a note that “as a result of their hard and dedicated work, an uncompromising fight against shadow and corruption, an increase in the nominal salary was recorded.” First, let’s say that the so-called “nominal salary” is the amount of untaxed salary (ie, the published figures can be mentally reduced by a quarter). Let’s say and publish the numbers. 2017 the official average nominal salary was 114,557 drams. It really increased in 2018, becoming 115,336 drams. It has increased by 779 drams. Unfriendly economists would mention inflation in this episode and start claiming that the increase was swallowed by inflation. But let’s leave it to them, the unfriendly economists. Let’s leave it and return to the data on pensions.
There is no lift here. In 2017, the average pension was 40,634 drams, and in 2018 it decreased very little – 40,478 drams. However, the 779 dram increase in salaries and the 156 dram decrease in pensions is such a minor phenomenon that you will not consider it a serious omission to ignore it. Instead, in 2018 In the report describing Armenia in numbers, there is one part, all the numbers of which need proper analysis. In the section describing the “Labor Market” it is stated that in 2017 219,000 unemployed were recorded (we are not talking about officially registered unemployed). 2018 it has officially grown to 234,000 people. According to the data of 2017, the number of employed people in our country exceeded 1 million, making 1 million 11,700 people. The official report of 2018 recorded a smaller number of employed people: 907.5 thousand people.
It is clear that as a result of these indicators, the so-called “unemployment rate” indicator has increased – this is the percentage of the unemployed in the economically active population. In 2017, it was 17.8 percent, and in 2018 it became 20.5 percent. In addition, unemployment rate higher than the national average was recorded in Vayots Dzor marz: 21.8 percent, Shirak marz: 22.9 percent, Kotayk marz: 25.5 percent, and Yerevan – 27.4 percent. And the highest index has the Tavush marz, where almost every third resident of working age is unemployed – 30.3 percent.
At the end, let’s bring some official data that can be interpreted in any way (I am sure that our officials will not see these data). 2016 About 95,800 people were looking for work in Armenia. In 2017, the number of job seekers was about 86,000, and in 2018 – about 82,000. As a hypothesis, I propose to think that the decrease in the number of job seekers, along with the increase in the number of unemployed, can be explained by the fact that people are tired. They are tired of searching.”
Details in today’s issue of the newspaper.
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