Compared to the last quarter of 2017, the rate was down by 1.4 percentage points and approached the lowest rate on record, in the third quarter of 2008, when it stood at 4.1%.

It was also considerably lower than the EU average in the third quarter of 2018 (6.6%), noted Statistics Office acting director Genovefa Ružić at a press conference in Ljubljana.

Among the people aged between 15 and 29, the survey unemployment rate in the last quarter of 2018 was at 7.6%, or two percentage points lower year-on-year. The rate was the lowest in the 55-64 age group, at 3.8%.

The long-term unemployment rate dropped to 1.8% year-on-year, as the number of long-term unemployed persons was down by 35.6%, from 29,000 to 19,000.

In the last quarter of 2018, 45,000 persons were unemployed by ILO standards, which is 14,000 (24.3%) fewer year-on-year. The active population in Slovenia was up by 12,000 (1.2%) to 984,000.

The number of inactive persons was up by 4,000 or 0.6% to 729,000. More than half of them (394,000) were older than 65, while 7% or 47,000 of them were aged between 25 and 49.

Ružić noted that there were a lot of job vacancies in 2018, on average 19,000 in each quarter. In the last quarter, the number of vacancies was up by 2,000 year-on-year, mostly in the construction, manufacturing and hospitality sectors.

The share of job vacancies in the total number of jobs was 2.4% in the last quarter of 2018, which is 0.2 percentage points more year-on-year.