Hausner: unemployment rate to reach nearly 20%

Labour Minister Jerzy Hausner estimated that the unemployment rate would surge to 19.7-19.9% in the autumn, up from 18% in January, as the graduates born at the beginning of the during the baby boom in the 1980s, will now flow to the labour market. It has been estimated that 900,000 graduates will start looking for a job later this year. In the 2002 budget, the government assumed that the jobless rate would reach 18.6% by the end of this year. kp,bb