Content
Published:
This is an archived release.
Rising unemployment
Unemployment was up by 10 000 from October 2008 to January 2009, and constituted 3.1 per cent of the labour force in January. Employment was stable in the same period.
The unemployment rate increased from 2.7 per cent of the labour force in October (as measured by the average of the three months from September to November) to 3.1 per cent in January (as measured by the average of the three months from December to February). The unemployment figure was up by 10 000. Most of the increase was among people aged 25-74.
Seasonally-adjusted figures for people registered unemployed and on government initiatives to promote employment with the Labour and Welfare Organisation (NAV) increased by 14 000 from October to January.
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NAV reports that 4 700 persons were incorrectly registered unemployed in February 2010. The erroneous figure was lower in previous months, but dates back to October 2008.This has no consequence for the LFS-numbers published by Statistics Norway, only for the comparisons with NAV's figures. Read more on NAV's website, or contact stein.langeland@nav.no |
Unemployment up in many countries
Unemployment increased in many countries from October to January, including the USA, Sweden, Denmark and France, while remaining stable in Germany. All figures refer to seasonally-adjusted data from Eurostat .
Stable employment
Adjusted for seasonal variations, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) shows that the number in employment increased by 2 000 from October (as measured by the average of the three months from September to November) to January (as measured by the average of the three months from December to February). This is inside the error margin, and when taking the error margin into account, employment has been stable since May 2008.
Man-weeks worked
From October to January, the average number of man-weeks (37.5 hours) worked each week decreased by 51 000. With New Year’s Eve being on a Wednesday in the first week of January, it seems that people took more days off this week than usual, and this may partly explain the large decline in man-weeks worked.
Employment and unemployment figures include permanent residentsThe LFS only includes persons who are registered as residents in the population register. Persons working in Norway but who are not registered as permanent residents or who are planning to stay for less than six months are not included in the number in employment in the LFS. If these people lose their job, it does not count as a fall in employment or a rise in unemployment. Statistics Norway publishes separate figures for registered non-residents once a year. See short-term immigrants . |
Uncertain figuresThe purpose of making seasonal adjustments is to describe the development over the last year, corrected for seasonal variations. In order to reduce uncertainty, the published series are three-month moving averages of the seasonally-adjusted figures. However, uncertainty means that sampling errors must be considered when interpreting the figures from the LFS. We normally compare the latest non-overlapping three-month periods. An overview of sampling errors in the LFS can be found in “ About the statistics ”, chapter 5 section 3. |
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Quarterly LFS figures, not seasonally adjusted, are presented in a separate article . |
RevisionsThe complete time series is re-estimated each month, and this may cause some adjustments of previously published figures. See Revisions for more information . |
Tables:
The statistics is published with Labour force survey.
Contact
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Arbeidsmarked og lønn
E-mail: arbeidsmarked@ssb.no
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Erik Herstad Horgen
E-mail: erik.horgen@ssb.no
tel.: (+47) 93 08 68 62