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Published:
This is an archived release.
Employment down
From May to August the number of employed persons decreased by 22 000. The unemployment rate was 3.2 per cent of the labour force in August.
Adjusted for seasonal variations The Labour Force Survey (LFS) shows a decrease in employment by 22 000, or 0.9 per cent from May (as measured by the average of the three months from April to June) to August (as measured by the average of the three months from July to September). The falling trend since the employment peak in the fall of 2008 therefore seems to continue. The reduction in employment is mainly within the age group 16-24.
Stable unemployment
The seasonally-adjusted unemployment increased by 1 000 persons from May (as measured by the average of the three months from April to June) to August (as measured by the average of the three months from July to September). The increase is equivalent to an increase of 0.1 percentage point; this is within the error margin of the LFS. The unemployment rate of July was revised up from 3.0 to 3.1 percent.
In comparison for the same period, seasonally-adjusted figures for those registered unemployed with the Labour and Welfare Organisation (NAV) showed an increase of 1 000, and including people on government initiatives to promote employment the increase was 4 000.
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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 May to August, unemployment continued to rise in Europe. In Germany the unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percentage point, ending at 7.7 per cent, while in France it rose from 9.5 to 9.9 per cent. In the same period, Sweden had an increase in the unemployment rate from 8.5 to 9.4 per cent. All figures refer to seasonally-adjusted data from Eurostat .
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