From the second quarter of 2008, when the situation on the labour market was very stable, until the second quarter of this year, the number of active persons was down by 70,000 or 7.6%, Lenart Lah of the Statistics Office told the press on Tuesday.

Survey unemployment meanwhile almost doubled, rising by 47.9% or 39,0000. But an even bigger increase was recorded with inactive persons, whose number increased by 47,000, mostly on account of pensioners.

According to data from the Pension and Disability Insurance Institute (ZPIZ), the number of receivers of pension went up by about 60,300 between January 2008 and August 2012.

The first half of 2012 was according to Lah marked on the one hand by a drop in unemployment and on the other by a rise in the number of inactive population.

An employment survey showed the number of unemployed dropped by about 7,000 in the January-June period this year, while the Employment Service's data show a drop of more than 10,000.

The number of inactive population was meanwhile rising in both the first and second quarter of the year, increasing by 21,000 people in total.

This was mostly due to retirement (number of pensioners went up by 9,400) and less student work (13,000 fewer students worked, which is a drop by more than a third). Partly, the rise in inactivity reflected the unemployed who stopped looking for a job.

Flexible forms of employment, which include part-time jobs, self-employed persons and fixed-term contractors, are becoming increasingly common. Last year 10.7% of all active persons had a part-time job and the share is constantly rising. But Slovenia is still well below the EU average of 19.4% in this respect.

The share of the self-employed rose to 12.6% last year, mostly due to state subsidies and the fact that employers prefer working with sole traders to employing, Lah said. But here too, Slovenia is below the EU average of 15%.

Meanwhile, the share of fixed-term contractors in Slovenia is among the highest in the EU. Fixed-term contracts are the dominant form of employment for those under 35 years (two-thirds of all fixed-term contractors belong to this age group), while such contracts are very rare among people over 55 (4%).

In the second quarter of 2012, 129,000 people worked on a fixed-term basis, which is 16.7% of all those in employment. Three-quarters of them worked on a fixed-term contract and 18.4% were students.

Student work contributes to high fixed-term employment figures in Slovenia, but even if students are excluded, the share of fixed-term contractors in Slovenia in 2011 stood at 14.1%, exceeding the EU average of 13.4%, Lah said.