1990 POPULATION CENSUS Detailed data based on a 2 per cent representative sample (1992)

I. REVIEW OF THE DATA - A/ Main characteristics of the population

DTLOYMENT, COMPOSITION OF ACTIVE EARNERS Economic activity of the population Up to the mid-1970s the proportion of active earners within the population grew, since then its trend has fallen continuously. In 1970 48.3 per cent, in 1980 47.3 per cent and in 1990 only 43.1 per cent of the population were economically active. Essentially, the process of the decrease which has lasted about a decade and a half can be divided into two phases. During the first phase which lasted approximately until the middle of the 1980s (till 1986) the demographic factors were dominant. The decline during this period can be attributed mainly to the fact that, of the employed having entered pensionable age, the number of those who continued to work as active earners became less and less. Besides, smaller and smaller cohorts entered productive age, and even among them, the proportion of those continuing their studies at different levels grew, by which resources of the labour force from the youth decreased gradually. The cohorts starting to work did not compensate for the loss caused by retirement and death, neither were any significant mobilizable labour resources available from before. The growth in the number and proportion of the elderly population — considering the generál right to receive a pension — alsó resulted in the increase in the proportion of pensioners within the population. This can alsó be ascribed to the fact — besides to a shift in the age-structure of the population — that a greater proportion of those entitled to pensions made use of the possibility of retirement and the number of people permitted to retire before reaching pensionable age and of the pensioners because of disability grew. While among inactive earners the number of pensioners continued to increase in the 1980s, that of mothers receiving child-care allowance — as a function of the changes in the number of births — declined during the first half of the decade. Due to the introduction of the child-care fee and to its subsequent extension, the number of persons, temporarily inactive because of being on child-care leave, alsó grew to a certain extent. (It should be emphasized that this latter increase occurred at a further unfavourable evolution in the number of births: its only cause is that the persons concerned made use of this new, more favourable form of support in a relatively greater proportion.) The proportion of dependents within the population feli significantly in the 1970s, since 1980 it has continued to decrease slightly. In the 1980s, among the dependents the number of pupils and students — as against the earlier trend - increased because the large cohorts of the 1970s gradually entered school-age. Dependents are mostly persons who, because of their age or situation, can't take a job (children under school-age, pupils, students, persons having somé chronic disease etc.) By the end of the 1980s those belonging to the above mentioned large cohorts had already attained the threshold of productive age, but till the end of 1989 only a relatively low share of them (who did not continue their studies after having completed the generál school) wanted to take a job. For these young people, because of conditions to be discussed later, it was difficult to start to work. The socio-economic processes having begun in the second half of the 1980 decade and resulting in a totál transformation exerted a great influence - both in content and alsó from the point of view of theory and methodology — on the level of employment. Open unemployment appeared in the country and the principle of "full employment", disputed already for a long time, became untenable. Till 1990, however, only partial information on the unemployed was available. Though the employment agencies had reported, already since 1986, the number of unemployed registered with them, there were many seeking employment who did not turn to employment offices but preferred to find a job individually, consequently, they were not registered. Consequently, the 1990 population census — for the first time since 1949 — provided again a possibility for the totál assessment of unemployment. At the survey with regard to this topic two 14