State Employment Agency head Volodymyr Halytskyi predicts increase in the unemployment rate by 36-39% or 200,000-220,000 from the 561,000 rate that was registered on November 1, and will reach the amount of 761,000-781,000 before 2009.

He expressed this forecast in an interview for the 5 Channel television company.

"The 561,000 unemployment rate will grew by 200,000-220,000 before 2009," Halytskyi predicted.

He also noted that the most pessimistic forecasts say that a total of 130,000 employees will be discharged in the metallurgical industry, and 70,000 in the construction and banking industries.

Halytskyi stressed that this unemployment rate is not a critical one, and forecasted that it will stand at the December 31, 2006 level.

He assured that the National Unemployment Insurance Fund has enough resources at its disposal to cover payments of unemployment compensations before 2009.

According to Halytskyi, the Labor and Social Policy Ministry is engaged into elaboration of the 2009 social protection program.

Halytskyi also reported that the State Employment Agency intends to supply 400,000 specialists with a retraining program.

First of all, the retraining program would be provided for specialists to be involved into conduct of the Euro 2012 European football championship.

As Ukrainian News earlier reported, the Labor and Social Policy Ministry is not ruling out the possibility of a 7.7% unemployment rate in 2009.

According to the Labor and Social Policy Ministry, a total of 538,000 out of the 1.4 million people that are currently unemployed are registered with the State Employment Agency while there are only 198,000 vacancies, out of which 40% are vacancies for people with professional qualifications and only 17% for people without professional training.

The official unemployment rate remained unchanged at 1.8% in September.