Unemployment rate slides under 6% in August

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Finland's employment figures showed a continued improvement in August. According to Statistics Finland's monthly Labour Force Survey, the number of the employed in August was 2,558,000, up by some 52,000 from 12 months previously.
      The employment rate grew by 1%-point from August 2006 to 71.5%. The unemployment rate declined by 0.9%-points to 5.9 per cent. A total of 162,000 persons were classified as unemployed in August, down from 185,000 in August 2006. The seasonally adjusted trend of the unemployment rate was 6.9% in August.
     
Employment improved in the private sector and was weaker in the public sector. The share of wage and salary earners who were in continuous full-time employment was 74.1%, compared with 73.4% a year earlier.
      Employment figures were improved in Western Finland and in Oulu Province. There were substantial differences between the sexes: the employment rate of men was 74.1% and that of women 69.0%.
      Unemployment was at its lowest in the south of the country, with a figure of 4.7%, and highets in Eastern Finland (9.2%).
     
One encouraging sign was the decline in unemployment among those between the ages of 15 and 24. This went down in August to 8.9%, a fall of 4.5%-points from the situation one year previously.
      Long-term unemployment was also down according to the Ministry of Labour's figures for job-seekers at Labour Exchanges: the number of those who had been out of work for a year or more fell from 64,000 to 51,000.


Links:
  Statistics Finland: Employment and Unemployment, August 2007

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