Analytics, Employment, Estonia

The labour market statistics on the first quarter that were published on Friday morning were grim – the unemployment rate grew by nearly four percentage points in comparison to the end of 2009 and reached nearly 20%. According to the ILO methodology, Estonia had 137,000 persons without work in the first quarter.

Pajula stated that besides the latter number’s absolute worth, its fast growth is also significant – less than two years ago the number of unemployed persons stayed below 30,000.

According to him, the number of employed persons is also low. In comparison to the same quarter last year, the employment rate fell nearly by another 10%. According to the labour market monitoring, there were 554,000 jobs in Estonia in the first quarter of 2010 and that is the lowest employment level ever registered since the end of the 1980s.

The analyst noted that the outlooks are much better – although the first-quarter unemployment rate was much higher than SEB predicted and will probably force the bank to review the 2010 outlook of 15% quite soon, the market outlook may not be as grim as the first quarter might indicate.

Pajula also remarked that in April, nearly 3,400 new jobs were created and almost all of them were filled with people during the same month. The last time the labour market was as active was in May 2006, at the peak of the growth cycle.