According to Statistics Finland’s Labour Force Survey, the number of employed people was 35,000 higher in January 2019 than one year ago. The number of unemployed persons in January was 181,000, which was 57,000 lower than one year ago. The trend of the unemployment rate was 6.4 per cent and the trend of the employment rate 72.6 per cent.
Statistics Finland points out that unemployment and employment vary quite considerably by month and the change from the observation of the previous month mainly describes the seasonal aspect rather than the trend in development. Thus, the latest statistical data are compared to the corresponding period of the year before.
By contrast, the figures of the trend series that are adjusted for seasonal and random variation are mutually comparable and phenomena associated with long-term development and cyclical changes are thus more easily observable from the trend of the time series.
Source: Statistics Finland
The trend usually changes somewhat when the data of the following month are included in the time series. This preliminary nature of trend figures should be taken into account when making conclusions. The figures reported in this release are not adjusted for seasonal variation unless separately mentioned that they concern the trend.
Number of employed and unemployed
In January 2019, the number of employed persons was 2,498,000, which was 35,000 higher than a year earlier. There were 15,000 more employed men and 20,000 more employed women than in January 2018.
In January, the employment rate , that is, the proportion of the employed among persons aged 15 to 64, stood at 70.6 per cent, having been 69.3 per cent one year earlier. From January last year, the employment rate for men aged 15 to 64 increased by 1.0 percentage points to 71 per cent and women’s employment rate by 1.8 percentage points to 70.2 per cent. Adjusted for seasonal and random variation, the trend of the employment rate was 72.6 per cent.
According to Statistics Finland's Labour Force Survey, there were 181,000 unemployed in January 2019, i.e. 57,000 fewer than in January of the year before. The number of unemployed men was 98,000 and that of women 83,000.
Unemployment rate
The unemployment rate in January was 6.8 per cent, this is 2.1 percentage points lower than one year earlier. The unemployment rate of men decreased by 1.3 percentage points to 7.1 per cent, and that of women by 2.9 percentage points to 6.4 per cent from the year before. The trend of the unemployment rate was 6.4 per cent.
In January, there were a total of 617,000 young people aged 15 to 24 . Of them, 230,000 were employed and 45,000 were unemployed. The number of young people in the active population, i.e. the employed and unemployed in total, was 275,000.
In January, the unemployment rate for young people aged 15 to 24, that is, the proportion of the unemployed among the labour force, stood at 16.3 per cent, which was 1.3 percentage points lower than one year previously. The trend of the unemployment rate among young people was 15.7 per cent. The share of unemployed young people aged 15 to 24 among the population in the same age group was 7.3 per cent.
Inactive population
There were 1,449,000 persons in the inactive population in January 2019, which was 24,000 more than one year earlier. Of the inactive population, 124,000 persons were in disguised unemployment , which was 16,000 fewer than in January 2018.
Source: Statistics Finland
The Employment Service statistics
At the end of January 2019, there were altogether 251,000 persons registered in accordance with the Employment Office Regulations as unemployed job seekers at the employment and economic development offices. The number of unemployed job seekers was 34,000 lower than in January of the previous year.
Unemployment fell in January from the corresponding period in 2018 in the areas of all Employment and Economic Development Centres: most in Pirkanmaa (-17%), North Ostrobothnia (-16%), Ostrobothnia (-15%), Kainuu (-15%), North Karelia (-15%) and Lapland (-15%). At the end of January, the number of fully laid off persons registered at the employment and economic development offices was 15,000, which was 2,000 fewer than twelve months earlier.
The number of persons engaged in services included in the activation rate totalled 122,000 at the end of January, which was 1,000 more than in January of the previous year. Altogether, 4.6 per cent of the labour force was covered by labour market policy services.
There were 32,000 unemployed job seekers aged under 25 registered at the employment and economic development offices. Their number was 3,000 lower than in January of the year before. During this January, 87,000 new vacancies were reported to the employment and economic development offices, which was 12,000 more than in January 2018.
