Content
Published:
This is an archived release.
Stable labour market
Both the employment and unemployment figures only had small changes from January to April. The unemployment rate was 3.1 per cent in April.
Adjusted for seasonal variations, the Labour Force Survey (LFS) shows that the number in employment in April (as measured by the average of the three months from March to May) was unchanged from January (as measured by the average of the three months from December to February). When taking the error margin into account, employment has been stable since April 2008.
Small changes in unemployment
Unemployment increased by 3 000 from January (as measured by the average of the three months from December to February) to April (as measured by the average of the three months from March to May). This is inside the error margin in the LFS. Last month the unemployment rate was 3.2 per cent, compared to the current 3.1 per cent. These figures are not significantly different. Small changes in the number unemployed and in the labour force may lead to changes of one tenth of a percentage point caused by rounding.
Seasonally-adjusted figures for those registered unemployed and on government initiatives to promote employment with the Labour and Welfare Organisation (NAV) increased by 14 000 in the same period.
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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 other countries
From January to April, unemployment increased in the EU countries as well as in the USA. In Denmark the unemployment rate increased from 4.6 percent in January to 5.5 in April. In the same period the unemployment rate increased from 8.1 to 8.9 per cent in the USA. All figures refer to seasonally-adjusted data from Eurostat .
Stable employment
Man-weeks worked
From January to April, the average number of man-weeks (37.5 hours) worked each week was up 34 000.
Employment and unemployment figures include permanent residentsThe LFS only includes persons who are registered as residents in the population register. Persons working in Norway who are not registered as permanent residents or who are planning to stay for less than six months are not included in the employment figure in the LFS. If these people lose their job, it does not count as a fall in employment or a rise in unemployment. In national accounts figures (NR), employed non-residents are included in the employment figure as long as they work in an establishment in Norway. If employment decreases in this group, it will count as a fall in employment in NR. Statistics Norway publishes separate figures for all 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. 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
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Ole Sandvik
E-mail: ole.sandvik@ssb.no
tel.: (+47) 99 04 82 06