Long-term joblessness is growing faster than total unemployment, the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment said on Tuesday. Until around six months ago, both categories were growing at roughly the same rate.
There were 104,000 long-term unemployed — people who had been looking for work for more than a year — in March. That was up by more than 39,000 from a year earlier.
According to Statistics Finland, there were 24,000 more jobseekers in March than a year ago. On the other hand, 22,000 more people were employed than a year before.
The trend of the employment rate went up slightly to 71.1 percent while the unemployment rate edged up to 7.7 percent.
Unemployment rate drops among young people
The unemployment picture for young people has brightened since the early days of the pandemic.
The jobless rate among those aged 15-24 was 21.9 percent in March, down by more than four percentage points from March 2020, when the impact of coronavirus began to be felt in the Finnish economy.
As of the end of March, just over 331,000 unemployed jobseekers were registered at Employment and Economic Development Offices (TE) and municipalities taking part in local government employment pilot schemes. The figure was up by over 22,000 from the previous year, and by 4,400 from the previous month.
More than a third of unemployed people, totalling 120,000, were over the age of 50. That was nearly 13,000 more than in March last year.
In the government statistics, workers on full-time furloughs are counted as unemployed jobseekers. In late March, there were almost 63,000 people on full-time furloughs, and nearly 80,000 furloughed workers altogether.
Many have been temporarily laid off due to coronavirus restrictions, particularly in the hotel and restaurant sector.
Joblessness up 28% among foreigners in Uusimaa
The upturn in employment of younger workers did not apply to jobseekers under the age of 25 in Uusimaa, which includes the Helsinki region. In this group, the number of unemployed people rose by almost 15 percent compared to a year earlier.
Meanwhile the number of long-term unemployed rose steeply in Uusimaa, rising by 73.4 percent since March 2020, for a total of just under 40,000.
Unemployment among foreigners in Uusimaa rose by just over 28 percent year-on-year. This March there were slightly more than 21,000 unemployed non-Finnish citizens in the region, up by around 4,600 from spring 2020, according to the labour ministry.