500,000 Kazakhstan citizens may be left unemployed with rise of retirement age

Raising the retirement age for women will cause a jobs deficit in Kazakhstan, Tengrinews.kz reports citing KazPotrebNadzor. The planned gradual rise of the retirement age for women will mean that there will be 30 percent less vacancies opening for new graduates in the next 10 years. The experts say that vacancies for young Kazakhstan graduates appear through creation of new jobs, retirement of old citizens and preliminary career termination by working citizens. This causes KazPotrebNadzor to believe that raising the retirement age for women has to be accompanied by a special program that would ensure creation of additional 50 thousand jobs every year. Otherwise, the reform will cause a dramatic surge of unemployment. According to the Statistics Agency, the average unemployment level in Kazakhstan made 5.3 percent in 2012, which is equivalent to 474 thousand people. This means that as a results of the rise of the retirement age the unemployment will double. Currently around 60 percent of the unemployed citizens are women (188.7 thousand men vs. 286.1 thousand women). The experts believe that the surge of unemployment expected after the rise in the retirement age will mostly hit women. They believe that it will become more difficult for young women to find jobs in the coming years.