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Published:
This is an archived release.
Employment still rising
From November 2006 to February 2007, the number of employed people increased by 19 000 according to new, seasonally adjusted figures from Statistics Norway's Labour Force Survey. The unemployment rate stood at 2.7 per cent in February.
Adjusted for seasonal variations, the number of employed people increased by 19 000 from November (as measured by the average of the three months from October to December) to February (as measured by the average of the three months from January to March). This is in line with the upward trend in employment since the summer of 2005.
Unemployment
The unemployment rate stood at 2.7 per cent of the labour force in February (as measured by the average of the three months from January to March), while it was 2.9 per cent in November (as measured by the average of the three months from October to December. The reduction of 0.2 percentage points is about similar in size to the error margin. The unemployment rate peaked at 4.9 per cent in mid-2005, and has fallen steadily since. It is now at the same level as the previous low in early 1999.
Seasonally adjusted figures of people registered unemployed with the Labour and Welfare Organisation, show a decline of 4 000 from October to January.
Continued growth in man-weeks worked
From November (as measured by the average of the three months from October to December) to February (as measured by the average of the three months from January to March), adjusted for seasonal variations, the average number of man-weeks (37.5 hours) worked each week rose by 28 000. This is in line with the upward trend since early 2004.
Unemployment down in Germany
In February, the unemployment rate stood at 7.1 per cent in Germany, down by 0.8 percentage points since November 2006.The unemployment rate for the EU15 fell from 7.2 to 7.0 per cent. In Sweden, the unemployment rate went up from 6.4 to 6.7 per cent during the same period. In Denmark, the unemployment rate fell from 3.6 to 3.4 per cent. The US had an unemployment rate of 4.5 per cent in February, the same as in November. (All figures refer to seasonally adjusted data from Eurostat .)
Uncertain figuresThe purpose of making adjustments for seasonal variations is to describe the development over the last year and provide estimates 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 February represent the average of the estimates for January, February and March. Quarterly LFS figures, not seasonally adjusted, are presented in a separate article . |
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
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Ole Sandvik
E-mail: ole.sandvik@ssb.no
tel.: (+47) 99 04 82 06