Finns returning to work faster than expected

Employees in Finland are returning to work faster than expected, labor and business statistics officials said here on Wednesday, reported Xinhua.

"The number of the furloughed has now come down to 90,000 from the peak of 170,000 in Finland," the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment said.

Tens of thousands of Finns have been laid off due to the pandemic. Under Finland's furlough scheme, people do not lose their jobs and can be re-hired quickly without the need to go through the recruitment process.

"The number of furloughed people is declining faster than we expected in the spring," a ministry official told the national broadcaster Yle.

As the service and catering sectors reopened in early June, the number of furloughed employees has declined in Finland. However, the number of furloughed experts and specialists has grown, a Finnish language business daily Kauppalehti reported on Wednesday, adding that unemployment among young people is also on the increase.

In the capital Helsinki, last month, the number of unemployed people under the age of 25 was 158 percent higher than a year earlier, and the respective figure was 131 percent for the 25 to 29 age group, according to Statistics Finland's Labor Force Survey released this week.

There were 47,000 more unemployed people in June than a year ago. Last month, the country's overall employment rate was 72.4 percent, and the unemployment rate was 6.7 percent. A third of the unemployed were furloughed only, according to the survey.

Full-time furloughed people are included in the national unemployment figures, while those employed part-time are not.