Karapetyan: 500,000 jobless in 3 million nation unrealistic

PanARMENIAN.Net - Narek Karapetyan, coordinator of the Our Way movement, stated that while official statistics register around 180,000 unemployed in Armenia, non-official estimates suggest as many as 500,000.

He argued that such a figure is unrealistic: “In a country of 3 million, it is impossible to have 500,000 people without work,” Karapetyan said, according to Panorama.am .

“There is no straightforward economic policy. The core goal of our movement is to propose a simple economic strategy to finally resolve unemployment. Believe me, unemployment is not as big of a problem as it is presented to us,” he noted.

Karapetyan emphasized that improving the situation requires industrialization: new factories must be built to provide local production, which would reduce dependence on imports.

“Every year we buy $4 billion more goods than we sell. Each year we become poorer by $4 billion,” he warned.

Businessman and philanthropist Samvel Karapetyan, currently in detention for two months, recently announced the start of a new political team formation. He stressed that the new team would have its own approach, rejecting divisive politics while remaining open to cooperation with like-minded forces. He also noted that there are professionals within state structures who, despite not sharing the government’s values, have yet to find a way out of the current situation.