RIGA, Aug 9 (LETA) - The actual unemployment level in Latvia has reached 7.3 percent, down 0.1 percentage points from a month ago, but there are difficulties to find the employees with the necessary qualifications, said State Employment Agency director Evita Simsone in an interview with the Latvian public television today.

She said that the situation is quite stable and typical for the Latvian job market, and slightly less than 66,000 people have been registered with the agency. In summer and early fall, the number of registered vacancies is also growing and now there are over 20,000 vacancies registered, but there are difficulties to find employees with the necessary qualifications.

"Of course, Covid-19 crisis has a slight impact on the unemployment level, but it is not significant. We cannot compare it with the crisis in 2008, even though there is a bigger impact on separate sectors - tourism, catering, hospitality that have not yet returned to the level they had before Covid-19," said Simsone.

The positive sign is that the agency has not received applications for collective redundancies due to Covid-19 or tax policy changes that came into force in July.

She said that the most complicated aspect in Latvian job market is regional differences as people's mobility is very low.

Asked whether the number of jobs that can be done remotely has increased, Simsone said that there are few vacancies where the employer says that it can be done fully remotely - just slightly over 1 percent.

As reported, in late June, registered unemployment level was 7.4 percent, down 0.2 percentage points from late May.