Number of employed persons goes up

The number of employed people was 32,000 higher in May 2019 than one year ago, according to Statistics Finland.

The number of unemployed persons was 249,000, which was 12,000 fewer than one year ago. The trend of the employment rate was 72.6 per cent and the trend of the unemployment rate was 6.6 per cent.

The trend of the employment rate was 72.6 per cent in May and the trend of the unemployment rate was 6.6 per cent. Based on seasonally adjusted data for May, the trend of the employment rate has risen a bit and the trend of the unemployment rate has remained unchanged in recent months.

In May 2019, the number of employed persons was 2,587,000 (margin of error ±34,000), which was 32,000 higher than a year earlier. There were 29,000 more employed men and 2,000 more employed women than in May 2018.

In May 2019, the employment rate , that is, the proportion of the employed among persons aged 15 to 64, stood at 73.1 per cent, having been 72.3 per cent one year earlier. From the previous year’s May, the employment rate of men aged 15 to 64 rose by 1.4 percentage points to 74.3 per cent and that of women by 0.2 percentage points to 71.8 per cent.

According to Statistics Finland's Labour Force Survey, there were 249,000 (margin of error ±21,000) unemployed in May 2019, i.e. 12,000 fewer than one year earlier. The number of unemployed men was 133,000 and that of women 116,000.

At 8.8 per cent, the unemployment rate in May was 0.5 percentage points lower than one year earlier. The unemployment rate of men decreased by 0.1 percentage points to 9.0 per cent, and that of women by 0.9 percentage points to 8.5 per cent.

In May, there were a total of 614,000 young people aged 15 to 24 . Of them, 280,000 were employed and 117,000 unemployed. The number of young people in the active population, i.e. the employed and unemployed in total, was 397,000. In May, the unemployment rate for young people aged 15 to 24, that is, the proportion of the unemployed among the labour force, stood at 29.4 per cent, which was 1.0 percentage points higher 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 19.0 per cent.

At the end of May 2019, there were altogether 227,000 persons registered in accordance with the Employment Office Regulations as job seekers at the employment and economic development offices. The number of unemployed job seekers was 15,000 lower than in May 2018.

Unemployment fell in May from the corresponding period in 2018 in the areas of all Employment and Economic Development Centres: most in South Savo (-11%), Kainuu (-11%), Ostrobothnia (-9%), Southwest Finland (-9%) and Southeast Finland (-9%). At the end of May, the number of persons fully laid off registered at the employment and economic development offices was 8,000, which was nearly the same number as twelve months earlier.

The number of persons engaged in services included in the activation rate totalled 124,000 at the end of May, which was 7,000 fewer than in May of the year before. Altogether, 4.4 per cent of the labour force was covered by labour market policy services.

There were 29,000 unemployed job seekers aged under 25 registered at the employment and economic development offices. Their number was 1,000 lower than in last year's May. During this May, 66,000 new vacancies were reported to the employment and economic development offices, which was 3,000 more than in May 2018.