Unemployment rate ups to 8.4% in Dec

The number of unemployed persons in December 2017 was 227,000 in the country, which was 20,000 higher than one year ago, according to Statistics Finland.

The unemployment rate was 8.4 per cent, having been 7.9 per cent in December of the year before.

There were 48,000 more employed than in December of the previous year. The unemployment rate in the fourth quarter (October to December) was 7.6 per cent, which was 0.4 percentage points lower than in the respective quarter of 2016. In 2017, the unemployment rate was, on average, 8.6 per cent, having been 8.8 per cent in 2016.

In December 2017, the number of employed persons was 2,469,000 (margin of error ±33,000), which was 48,000 more than a year earlier. There were 19,000 more employed men and 30,000 more employed women than in December 2016.

In December 2017, the employment rate , that is, the proportion of the employed among persons aged 15 to 64, stood at 69.6 per cent, having been 68.3 per cent one year earlier. From last year’s December, men’s employment rate rose by 0.7 percentage points to 70.4 per cent and women’s by 2.0 percentage points to 68.8 per cent. Adjusted for seasonal and random variation, the trend of the employment rate was 70.7 per cent.

According to Statistics Finland's Labour Force Survey, there were 227,000 unemployed in December 2017 (margin of error ±18,000), i.e. 20,000 more than one year earlier. The number of unemployed men was 125,000 and that of women 103,000.

At 8.4 per cent, the unemployment rate in December was 0.6 percentage points higher than one year earlier. Men’s unemployment rate was 8.9 per cent and women’s 7.9 per cent. The trend of the unemployment rate was 8.4 per cent.

In December, there were a total of 624,000 young people aged 15 to 24 . Of them, 249,000 were employed and 46,000 unemployed. The number of young people in the active population, i.e. the employed and unemployed in total, was 295,000. In December, the unemployment rate for young people aged 15 to 24, that is, the proportion of the unemployed among the labour force, stood at 15.5 per cent, which was 0.8 percentage points higher than one year previously. The trend of the unemployment rate among young people was 18.8 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.

There were 1,423,000 persons in the inactive population in December 2017, which was 58,000 fewer than one year earlier. Of the inactive population, 145,000 persons were in disguised unemployment , which was 21,000 fewer than in December 2016.