The employment situation clearly worsened in Finland at the end of 2020.
According to Statistics Finland’s Labour Force Survey, the number of employed people was 74,000 lower in December than one year before. There were 48,000 more unemployed than in December 2019.
The trend of the employment rate was 71.8% and the trend of the unemployment rate was 8.2%.
In December 2020, the number of employed persons was 2,496,000, which was 74,000 lower than a year earlier. There were 26,000 fewer employed men and 48,000 fewer employed women than in December 2019.
The employment rate , that is, the proportion of the employed among persons aged 15 to 64, stood at 70.7%, having been 73% one year earlier. From the previous year’s December, the employment rate of men fell by 1.9 percentage points to 71.5% and that of women by 2.7 percentage points to 70%.
212,000 unemployed
According to Statistics Finland's Labour Force Survey, there were 212,000 unemployed last December, which is 48,000 more than one year earlier. The number of unemployed men was 119,000 and that of women 93,000.
The unemployment rate was 7.8% in December, having been 6% in the year before. Unemployment among men rose by 2.3 percentage points from twelve months earlier, to 8,4%. For women, it increased by 1.4 percentage points to 7.2%.
The unemployment rate for young people aged 15 to 24 stood at 20%, which was 5.2 percentage points higher than one year previously. The trend of the unemployment rate among young people was 20.4%.
Disguised unemployment
There were 1,421,000 persons in the inactive population in December 2020, which was 23,000 more than one year earlier. Of the inactive population, 129,000 persons were in disguised unemployment, which was 14,000 more than in December 2019.
According to Statistics Finland's definition, people in disguised unemployment are those outside the labour force who would like gainful work and would be available for work within a fortnight, but who have not looked for work actively in the past four weeks. The reasons are giving up searching for a job or other reasons such as studies, caring for children or health reasons.
Source: Statistics Finland
Annual averages for 2020
In 2020, the average number of employed persons was 2,528,000, which was 37,000 lower than in 2019. In 2020, the employment rate was 71.6%, having been 72.6% in 2019.
The rate of unemployment was, on average, 7.8% in 2020, having been 6.7% in 2019. In 2020, the average number of unemployed persons was 213,000, which was 29,000 more than in the year before.
The number of hours worked by employed persons was approximately 1.9% lower in 2020 than in 2019. The amount of labour input or hours actually worked per employee fell slightly from 2019.
