Unemployment rate drops to 8.2% in Q2

The rate of unemployment in the country was 8.2 per cent in the second quarter of 2018, which is 1.8 percentage points lower than that in the respective period of 2017, according to Statistics Finland.

Finland’s Labour Force Survey said the number of employed people was 99,000 higher in June 2018 than one year ago.

The number of unemployed persons was 192,000 in June or 57,000 less than one year ago. The trend of the unemployment rate was 7.2 per cent in June.

In June 2018, the number of employed persons was 2,672,000 (margin of error ±33,000), which was 99,000 more than a year earlier. There were 58,000 more employed men and 41,000 more employed women than in June 2017.

In June 2018, the employment rate, i.e., the proportion of the employed among the persons aged 15 to 64, stood at 75.5 per cent, which was 72.5 per cent one year earlier.

From June 2017, men’s employment rate rose by 3.5 percentage points to 77.0 per cent and women’s by 2.6 percentage points to 74.1 per cent. Adjusted for seasonal and random variation, the trend of the employment rate was 71.8 per cent.

According to Statistics Finland’s Labour Force Survey, there were 192,000 (margin of error ±19,000) unemployed in June 2018, i.e., 57,000 fewer than in June of the year before. The number of unemployed men was 104,000 and that of women 89,000.

In June, there were a total of 619,000 young people aged 15 to 24. Of them, 375,000 were employed and 61,000 unemployed. The number of young people in the active population, i.e., the employed and unemployed in total, was 436,000. In June, the unemployment rate for young people aged 15 to 24, that is, the proportion of the unemployed among the labour force, stood at 14.0 per cent, which was 7.7 percentage points lower than one year previously. The trend of the unemployment rate among young people was 16.2 per cent. The share of unemployed young people aged 15 to 24 among the population in the same age group was 9.8 per cent.

In the second quarter (April to June) of 2018, the average number of employed persons was 2,573,000, or 79,000 higher than that in the corresponding quarter of 2017. The number of employed persons increased most in human health and social work activities and in manufacturing.