Education expert, Ermal Hasimja, said that in recent years, Albanians seem to prefer to be employed in the public sector.

During an interview for Euronews Albania’s ‘SOT’, Hasimja said that government jobs and the public sector has grown considerably, even though numerous services have been transferred online and the general population in the country continues to shrink.

“What we’ve seen all these years, unfortunately, is that there are always more and more Albanians wanting to work for the state. It is a phenomenon that is common, in fact, the public administration sector has grown tremendously. Based on the last stats I checked out recently, there were about 185 000 registered public servants. This number has always been increasing, all the while services get increasingly moved online and Albania’s population continuously shrinks. It is clear that these numbers represent mass employment carried out by the government for its own clientelist gains,” – he said.