At the end of March, a total of 331,500 unemployed jobseekers were registered at the Employment and Economic Development Offices and municipalities participating in the local government pilots on employment.
This represents an increase of 22,500 from the previous year.
The number of unemployed jobseekers increased by 4,400 from the previous month. These figures are from the Employment Bulletin of the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment.
The bulletin shows that the number of people laid off was 79,500 in the whole country at the end of the third month; a year-on-year increase of 5,500.
The number of people fully laid off totaled 62,700, representing a decrease of 2,600 from March the year before. The number of people fully laid off increased by 7,100 from February.
The number of long-term unemployed — that is those who had been unemployed without interruption for at least a year — amounted to 104,000, up 39,100 on the previous year. The number of unemployed jobseekers aged over 50 was 120,000, representing an increase of 12,700 on the year before.
Unemployed jobseekers under 25 years of age numbered 40,600, representing a decrease of 500 from March last year.
Among unemployed young people, the period of unemployment ended within three months on average in 54.9% of cases between January and March, which is 10.3 percentage points less than the year before.
Increase in new vacancies
The number of new vacancies reported during March totaled 77,700, or 14,200 more than in March the previous year. The total number of unfilled vacancies amounted to 162,500 in March, which was 12,600 more than a year ago.
At the end of March, the number of persons covered by services included in the activation rate amounted to 117,100, down 2,100 on the previous year. These services include pay subsidies, labour market training, work trials and self-motivated studies.
Unemployment rate 8.1%
According to the Labour Force Survey issued by Statistics Finland, in March the number of people in employment was 22,000 more than on the previous year. The employment rate was 70.7%, which was 0.5 percentage points higher than in March the year before but still far from the 75% target set by the government.
According to the Survey, the unemployment total was 219,000, which is 24,000 more than a year ago. The unemployment rate was 8.1% in March, or 0.8 percentage points higher than the previous year.
The average unemployment rate for the first quarter was 8.3%.
To understand the key differences between the two unemployed-counting methods and their results, it is important to know that the Employment Service Statistics of the Ministry are compiled on the basis of the information in the Employment and Economic Development Offices’ customer register, while the Labour Force Survey of Statistics Finland is based on sampling.
