Fewer young people employed

At workAt work. Photo: pixabay.com

From the second quarter of 2015 to the second quarter of 2016 there was a reduction of 22 000 people in employment in the age group 15-24.

Most of the reduction was in full-time employment. An increasing number of people in this age group claimed to be in education.

Since the working-age population and the number of unemployed in the age group 15-24 were both unchanged, there was a reduction in the labour force participation rate (the labour force as a percentage of the working-age population) of 2.9 percentage points from the second quarter of 2015 to the second quarter of 2016.

The Labour Force Survey (LFS) shows that the labour force participation rate among the population aged 15-74 years was 70.8 per cent in the second quarter of 2016, down 0.8 percentage points from the same quarter the previous year. The decrease was mainly among the under 25s – especially among women.

Employment decreased
The number of employed persons went down by 16 000 from the second quarter of 2015 to the second quarter of 2016. Employment among the under 25s decreased by as much as 22 000 persons, mainly among those in a full-time job. In the same age group in the same period of time, an increasing number of people stated that school or studying was their main activity.

The LFS shows a continued drop in mining and quarrying – an industry dominated by oil and gas extraction. The number of employed persons (15-74 years) decreased by 11 000 or 16 per cent from the second quarter of 2015 to the second quarter of 2016. In the same period, the number of employed persons in wholesale and retail trade dropped by 9 000. Health and social work and personal services were the industries with the greatest increase in the number of employed persons, with 18 000 and 5 000 persons respectively compared to the same quarter of 2015.

 

Source: SSB / Norway Today