According to data collected by Lusa from INEFOP, more than 112,000 citizens managed to find work in 2023, via employment centers.
The use of INEFOP centers increased by 43 percent in 2023, with 74,461 more applications compared to the same period last year, in which 99,000 applications and 86,000 placements were registered.
According to the general director of INEFOP, Manuel Mbangui, Angola has 78 employment centers, which guarantee the intermediation of job demand and supply across the 18 provinces.
Speaking to Lusa, the official said that part of the applications were intermediated by employment agencies, which registered, last year, 18,499 citizens looking for work.
But there was also an increase in job offers placed directly by companies, totaling 113,078 offers.
Of these, "we were able to satisfy 99.67 percent of this demand (...). We were able to place 112,707 citizens in the job market in 2023", highlighted the person in charge.
The majority of citizens who go to INEFOP's employment centers are men (73 percent) with an average age of 26 years old and have completed secondary education.
"In terms of qualifications, we have close to 77,000 citizens who are mid-level technicians, young people who have finished high school and are looking for a job. This constitutes the vast majority of those who are looking for a job," he explained.
Manuel Mbangui also noted that commerce and services and civil construction are the areas that concentrate the greatest demand in terms of placements and that "unfortunately" the agriculture sector is the least sought after, at the center level.
The general director of INEFOP, a body supervised by the Ministry of Public Administration, Labor and Social Security (MAPTSS), also highlighted the growth in the activity of employment centers, whose actions, he noted, "are becoming increasingly known".
Mbangui noted, however, that these activities still do not reflect the real picture of what is happening in the job market in Angola, "because the majority of offers and placements continue to be made outside the employment center circuit".
"Today our biggest activity in employment centers, more than intermediating the demand and supply of employment, has also been the recording of placements made directly by companies", hence "there is this growth in our indicators in relation to the job market work," he stressed.
Companies in Angola are not obliged to hire workers via employment centers, but they have a duty to inform these public institutions when they make placements "for registration purposes and better planning of public policies aimed at employability", he explained.
INEFOP developed its actions based on the program of revitalization, modernization and expansion of its services, focused on the reformulation of processes at the level of employment centers and human capital training, actions that will continue to be materialized in 2024.
"International recruitment systems have evolved, companies today look for competence and, therefore, we had to restructure our entire model, which was essentially based on documentary evidence", concluded Manuel Mbangui.
Data released last week indicates that the unemployment rate in Angola increased by 2.2 points, to 31.9 percent, in the last quarter of 2023, with 80.5 percent of employees working in the informal sector.
Angola has 5.4 million unemployed people, divided between 2.5 million men and 2.9 million women, according to INE data.
