The Põhjarannik interview with Erik Kalda had appeared on the paper's website last Saturday, while the follow-up piece by Erik Gamzejev appeared on Wednesday.

In the more recent piece the daily says that, while the prime minister had said in a recent interview that while negative news – for instance about job losses – is seized upon and news about job creation ignored, this is not the case, listing various companies including Eesti Energia and VKG which the paper says it has written about many times in the context of new jobs.

Põhjarannik also says that while the prime minister has denied the green transition has led to job losses in Ida-Viru County, the current figure of a little over 2,800 employees in Eesti Energia's oil shale processing sector is little more than half the figure for 2012 – plus the loss of related jobs, which Eesti Energia puts at three per oil shale employee.

Põhjarannik also challenges a statement the prime minister made to the effect that for 2023, while 780 jobs will disappear in Ida-Viru County, 2,640 new jobs will be created – using the unemployment rate in the county, which is practically unchanged at 12.2 percent this month and with two months to go in the year, compared with 12.1 percent at the start of the year.

Finally, the publication says it takes issue with a statement the prime minister gave in the interview, that unemployment among women was higher in the rest of the country – again relying on Unemployment Insurance Fund (Töötukassa) data, which puts the rate of unemployment among women in Estonia's easternmost county, at 53 percent, almost identical to the nationwide rate (53.5 percent) and lower than Harju County's figure (56 percent).

Põhjarannik is part of the Postimees group of newspapers.

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