Employment rate increases in December 2019

The number of employed people was 17,000 higher in December 2019 than one year ago, according to Statistics Finland.

There were 18,000 more unemployed than in December 2018. The trend of the employment rate was 73.0 per cent and the trend of the unemployment rate was 6.7 per cent.

The unemployment rate in the fourth quarter was 6.0 per cent, which was unchanged from October to December 2018. In 2019, the employment rate was 72.6 per cent, having been 71.7 per cent in 2018.

The trend of the employment rate was 73.0 per cent in December and the trend of the unemployment rate was 6.7 per cent.

In December 2019, the number of employed persons was 2,570,000 (margin of error ±33,000), which was 17,000 more than a year earlier. There were 11,000 fewer employed men and 28,000 more employed women than in December 2018.

In December, the employment rate , that is, the proportion of the employed among persons aged 15 to 64, stood at 73.0 per cent, having been 72.1 per cent one year earlier. From the previous year’s December, the employment rate of men aged 15 to 64 fell by 0.4 percentage points to 73.4 per cent and that of women rose by 2.4 percentage points to 72.6 per cent.

According to Statistics Finland's Labour Force Survey, there were 164,000 unemployed in December 2019 (margin of error ±18,000), i.e. 18,000 more than one year earlier. The number of unemployed men was 87,000 and that of women 77,000.

The unemployment rate was 6.0 per cent in December, having been 5.4 per cent in the year before. The unemployment rate for men rose by 1.0 percentage points from the previous year’s December to 6.1 per cent. Women's unemployment rate was 5.8 per cent and it remained almost unchanged compared with December 2018.