Paper: well more than 100,000 people may be unemployed
10.08.2010, 14:40An analysis of health coverage data as provided by the Estonian Health Insurance Fund shows that there may well be 100,000 people unemployed in Estonia.
This is notably more than the official unemployment figure that is based on the data of the Estonian Unemployment Insurance Fund which claims that there are about 75,000 registered unemployed in Estonia or 11.6% of the population, reported Eesti Päevaleht daily.
The analysis is based on the consideration that while in March 2008, there were 1.2 million people in Estonia who had health coverage, the number at present has fallen by roughly 20,000 people.
Since it is highly likely that such rapid fall in the number of people covered with health insurance has been caused by quickly growing unemployment, one may assume that these 20,000 people are unemployed, but have not registered themselves in the Unemployment Insurance Fund and are not included in the list.
There are about 71,500 people in Estonia who have no health insurance at present. According to the most recent survey on health insurance coverage that was made in 2004, the majority of people (75%) without health coverage are no-working persons and persons who are not registered as unemployed. The remaining were people who had part-time work, but did not pay tax (i.e., received unreported salaries, self-employed persons with tax liabilities and persons working abroad.)