Women's employment in Moldova falls to 47.4% in 2025 as gender gap returns to 6 points

2025: a labour market withdrawal concentrated among women

Labour Force Survey (LFS) data published by the NBS show that the labour market in the Republic of Moldova lost momentum in 2025. The participation rate of the population aged 15-64 fell from 54.6% in 2024 to 52.3% (−2.3 percentage points), and the employment rate from 52.3% to 50.3% (−2.0 pp), within a single year.

A breakdown by sex shows that the decline was not evenly distributed. The employment rate of men aged 15-64 edged down from 53.7% to 53.4% (−0.3 pp). The employment rate of women fell from 51.1% to 47.4% (−3.7 pp). For participation the contrast is starker still: −0.1 pp for men (55.9% → 55.8%) against −4.3 pp for women (53.4% → 49.1%).

In other words, almost the entire contraction of the labour force in 2025 came from women. Female employment in 2025 (47.4%) was below its 2023 level (49.3%), but remained above that of 2022 (45.3%).

The gender gap: from the 2024 low back to 6 percentage points

The LFS series for the 15-64 age group available in the NBS database begins in 2019, the year of the survey's methodological revision. Between 2019 and 2023 the gender employment gap was relatively stable, at between 5.2 and 7.6 pp. In 2024 it narrowed abruptly to 2.6 pp (53.7% for men against 51.1% for women), the lowest level in the series.

2025 reversed this convergence. The employment gap returned to 6.0 pp (53.4% against 47.4%), and the participation gap widened from 2.5 to 6.7 pp. In effect, a year of convergence was followed by a year of reversion to the earlier pattern.

Over the period 2019-2025 as a whole, the increase in employment was identical for both sexes: +3.5 pp for women (from 43.9% to 47.4%) and +3.5 pp for men (from 49.9% to 53.4%). In 2023, overall participation of the population aged 15-64 rose by 4.5 pp in a single year. This jump and the subsequent volatility suggest that some of the movements may also reflect sampling effects or revisions to survey weights. For this reason, 2024 should be treated with caution as a benchmark.

Rural areas: more than two-thirds of women are outside the labour force

Indicators by sex and area of residence are available in the NBS database for the population aged 15 and over. Levels are therefore lower than those for the 15-64 age group, but the direction is the same. The employment rate of rural women fell from 35.2% in 2024 to 31.1% in 2025 (−4.1 pp), and that of urban women from 46.2% to 42.5% (−3.7 pp).

Among men the decline was smaller and likewise concentrated in rural areas: from 40.9% to 38.0% in rural areas (−2.9 pp) and from 52.8% to 52.3% in urban areas (−0.5 pp). As a result, in 2025, for the population aged 15 and over, the gender employment gap stood at 6.9 pp in rural areas and 9.8 pp in urban areas.

The inactivity rate of rural women reached 68.0% in 2025. This is 4.8 pp above the 2024 level (63.2%) and 2.2 pp above that of 2019 (65.8%). In the same year, the absolute poverty rate in rural areas was 40.0% (NBS, 2025). The two figures do not demonstrate a causal link, but they suggest that in rural areas low female employment coincides with high economic vulnerability among households.

Inactivity, not unemployment — and a gap that starts in youth

The fall in female employment did not translate into unemployment. The ILO unemployment rate of women aged 15-64 fell from 4.2% in 2024 to 3.5% in 2025, while for men it rose from 3.9% to 4.4%. By contrast, the inactivity rate of women aged 15-64 rose from 46.6% to 50.9% (+4.3 pp), while that of men remained virtually unchanged (44.1% → 44.2%). Under the ILO definition, the women who left employment are no longer actively seeking work.

The pattern is already visible in the youngest generation. Among those aged 15-24, the male employment rate rose from 18.5% in 2024 to 24.1% in 2025 (+5.6 pp), while the female rate fell from 16.7% to 15.1% (−1.6 pp). The participation rate of young women is 16.9%, against 25.4% for young men, a gap of 8.5 pp.

Young women who do look for work find it harder to secure. The ILO unemployment rate among women aged 15-24 was 10.9% in 2025, more than twice that of men of the same age (5.2%). In 2024 the relationship was reversed (8.9% for women against 10.5% for men). It follows that 2025 was an unfavourable year for women in this age group too, not only across the 15-64 population as a whole.

Implications for Moldova

Women accounted for 53.0% of the usually resident population on 1 January 2025 (1,266,982 out of 2,388,571 people, NBS). In a country with a shrinking population, a 4.3 pp fall in female participation in a single year represents a significant loss of labour resources.

The withdrawal occurred through inactivity, not unemployment. This may reflect barriers to participation rather than a lack of labour demand: care for children and older relatives, a lack of services and transport in rural areas, and informal or seasonal jobs. The data presented here, however, do not allow these hypotheses to be tested. Activation policies would require data on the reasons for inactivity, which the LFS collects but which are not analysed in this paper.

The rural-urban divide suggests that uniform nationwide interventions could have uneven effects. In rural areas, 68.0% of women aged 15 and over are inactive, and the rural female employment rate (31.1%) was 11.4 pp below the urban rate (42.5%) in 2025.

Finally, the series is volatile: the gap narrowed to 2.6 pp in 2024 and returned to 6.0 pp in 2025. Assessments of labour market equality policies should therefore not rely on a single year. Quarterly data and cohort analysis would make it possible to distinguish a structural trend from a statistical fluctuation.

Sources

• National Bureau of Statistics of Moldova (NBS), statistical database

@misc{socium20261012,
  author       = {{Socium -- Foundation for the Study of Society}},
  title        = {Women's employment in Moldova falls to 47.4\% in 2025 as gender gap returns to 6 points},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = {10},
  day          = {12},
  howpublished = {\url{https://socium.md/en/analyses/2026-10-12-women-s-employment-in-moldova-falls-to-47-4-in-2025-as-gender-gap-returns-to-6-p/}},
  note         = {Data: National Bureau of Statistics of Moldova (NBS), statistical database},
  language     = {english}
}