Content
Unchanged unemployment
The unemployment rate was 3.5 per cent in February 2013, unchanged from November 2012.
| February 2013 | Change from the previous non-overlapping three-month period | |
|---|---|---|
| 1Three-month average named by the middle month. | ||
| Unemployed persons | 95 000 | 0 |
| In per cent of the labour force | 3.5 | 0.0 |
| Employed persons | 2 599 000 | 7 000 |
| In per cent of the population | 68.8 | 0.0 |
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) shows that there were 95 000 unemployed persons in February 2013 (average of January-March), adjusted for seasonal variations. This was unchanged compared with November (average of October-December).
Stable employment
The seasonally-adjusted figures from the LFS showed an increase in employment of 7 000 persons from November 2012 to February 2013. Since June 2012, the employment figures have only shown variations that are within the error margin in the LFS. This represents a break with an almost two-year long period of growth in employment until that point of time. The employment rate, which is employed persons as a percentage of the population aged 15–74, was 68.8 per cent in February – unchanged from November.
Increase in unemployment in the EU15 area
In the EU15, unemployment increased from 10.9 per cent in November to 11.1 per cent in February. The unemployed in Germany corresponded to 5.4 per cent of the labour force in both November and February. In France, however, unemployment increased by 0.3 percentage points to 10.8 per cent in February. In the USA, unemployment decreased by 0.1 percentage points during the same period, to 7.7 per cent in February. The international figures refer to seasonally-adjusted data from Eurostat.
Additional information
The 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.
Contact
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Jørn Ivar Hamre
E-mail: jorn.ivar.hamre@ssb.no
tel.: (+47) 21 09 49 29
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Erik Herstad Horgen
E-mail: erik.horgen@ssb.no
tel.: (+47) 21 09 47 82
