Unemployment figures stable at 4%

NAV Social security fraud, NAV Rule labour marketNAV.Photo: Norway Today Media

There were 111,000 unemployed registered in Norway in October last year. That is 4.0% of the workforce, and a 0.1% decline since July, showed seasonally adjusted figures.

 

Unemployment was the same as the month before, showed the figures from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) made by Statistics Norway (SSB).

In October, there were 3,000 fewer than in September.

The decline is within the margin of error for LFS, yet in line with the trend in unemployment since April last year.

The figures for October (which are the average for the period August to October) showed that the number of registered unemployed, and ordinary users of Nav, fell by 4,000 people from July.

According to the LFS, the seasonally adjusted number of workers increased by 6,000 people between July and October. This is also within the margin of error.

As expected

The figures correspond to what was expected by experts.

‘Unemployment has long been on a downward trend, while employment has been quite steady. Now, employment figures in LFS also show signs of moving up, in line with the national accounts figures that have shown an increase in employment for a long time’, said senior adviser, Kyrre Aamdal, of DNB
Markets in a comment about the figures.

In the past year, unemployment fell by 21,000 people, from 4.8% in October 2016, to 4.0% in October 2017.

Nav figures

Statistics Norway’s LFS is one of two sets of figures used to measure
unemployment in Norway. Nav’s overview is the other. While SSB’s are based on a quarterly interview survey, Nav counts the number of those who are registered unemployed with them once a month.

Therefore, Nav’s figures for October 2017 showed that the total unemployed were 2.4% of the labour force, which was down from 2.8% in October 2016.

SSB’s numbers are usually higher than Navs’, as Nav does not count people seeking work without registering for unemployment benefits.

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