Given the country's economic liberalization agenda, the priorities are to keep the situation in the labor market manageable and make the national employment policy more effective. Some 4,617,600 people were employed in the national economy in January-March 2010. The situation in the employment market was stable: the unemployment rate was reducing throughout the year, remaining within socially acceptable limits.
Since September 2009 the registered unemployment has remained at the level of 0.9 percent to the economically active population. Belarus is one of the world leaders in employment.
The State provides additional employment guarantees to the people in difficult situations and to the vulnerable categories of the society including to the parents of large families and one-parent households, people under 21 looking for first-time employment, to the disabled, to people recently released from correctional facilities, and to others .
Of critical importance to many people in Belarus is the pension security program. As of 1 January 2010, the pension system of the Republic of Belarus covered 2.453 million citizens; 11 percent of GDP is used for pension payments.
One of the priorities of the social policy of the state is social security of the veterans of the Great Patriotic War, people affected by war, single and lonely elderly people. There are 42,200 veterans of the Great Patriotic War in Belarus. Of 30,566 participants of the Great Patriotic War, 8,936 people are disabled war veterans of the 1st and 2nd disability groups.
There are 506,800 disabled citizens in Belarus or 5.3 percent of the total population (10 percent on average in the world). To ensure unhampered access to social and other infrastructure and thus improve the quality of life of these people is one of the goals of the National Program for Creating a Barrier-Free Environment for Physically Impaired Individuals 2007-2010.
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