Unemployment decreased further in 2014, but less steeply
The unemployment rate was 7.4 percent and the employment rate 63 percent in 2014. Unemployment has decreased and employment has increased since 2011, but these changes have gradually slowed down, Statstics Estonia reports.
In 2014, the average number of unemployed people was 50,000, which is 9,000 less than the year before. The annual average unemployment rate (7.4 percent) was 1.2 percentage points lower than in 2013 (8.6 percent). Compared to the highest unemployment rate of the last decade (16.7 percent in 2010), unemployment has more than halved. In 2014, the unemployment rate in Estonia was relatively low, compared to other EU countries.
In Q4 of 2014, the unemployment rate had dropped to 6.3 percent and the estimated number of unemployed persons was 43,000. That is 16,000 people less than in Q4 of 2013.
The number of long-term unemployed - that is people who have been looking for a job for one year or longer - has decreased by 14 percent.
The youth unemployment rate was 15 percent. Although unemployment decreased faster among young people than in other age groups, the number is still two times higher than the total unemployment rate. The demographic decrease in the size of the youth population facilitates the decrease in youth unemployment (the size of the age group 15–24 has decreased by more than a quarter in the last ten years).
In 2014, the employment rate of the population aged 15–74 was 63.0 percent, which is close to the level seen during the last economic boom.
The yearly change in employment was most of all influenced by an increase in the number of persons employed in information and communication, accommodation and food services, retail trade, health, and transportation and storage (postal and courier activities), as well as by a decrease in the number of persons employed in agriculture, manufacturing and financial and insurance activities.
Editor: M. Oll