Labour force survey, seasonally-adjusted figures, October 2005

A change of 7 000 in unemployment from July (the June-August period) to October (September-November) is outside the LFS error margin. The actual size of the change is uncertain, but there has been a decline with great certainty. Seasonally adjusted figures of registered unemployment at job centres show a decline of 3 000 people in the same period.

The number of employed people increased by 5 000 from July to October, according to the LFS. This is, however, inside the LFS error margin. Still, employment appears to be following an upward trend that has been seen since the summer of 2003.

EU unemployment down

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for Norway was 4.6 per cent in October, compared with 4.9 per cent in July. The rate in the EU15 area fell from 7.8 to 7.6 per cent, and in the OECD area from 6.5 to 6.4 per cent. In the same period, the unemployment rate stayed unchanged at 5.0 per cent in the USA. From July to October, the unemployment rate fell from 8.2 to 8.1 per cent in Finland, from 9.3 to 9.1 per cent in Germany, and from 9.5 to 9.3 per cent in France, according to figures from the OECD and Eurostat .

From July to October, man-weeks worked went up by 67 000, which is clearly outside the LFS error margin. But because of a change in the vacation pattern, the seasonal-adjustment method is not fully able to measure the trend in man-weeks worked at the moment: An unusual strong increase occurred in the number of people on vacation leave in the summer months this year, particularly in July and August, compared with the two previous years. This led to an extraordinary low level of man-weeks worked in July. Therefore, the increase is probably lower than it appears to be.

Uncertain figures

Quality tests show that the seasonally adjusted LFS unemployment figures are uncertain. The seasonal-adjustment method has problems identifying a stable seasonal pattern for this series. The random component is relatively large compared with the seasonal component. The figures should therefore be treated with caution.

The purpose of adjusting for seasonal variations is to describe the development over the last year and provide figures of change between the last two three-month periods, corrected for normal seasonal variations. In order to reduce uncertainty, the published series are three-month moving averages of the seasonally adjusted figures. For instance, the figures for October represent the average of the estimates for September, October and November.

Tables:

• Table 1. Employment and unemployment for persons aged 16-74 years, seasonally adjusted, three-months moving average. Absolute figures in 1000 and unemployed persons in per cent of the labour force.