Estonian official unemployment rate drops to 10.9%
15.11.2011, 12:10The unemployment rate in Estonia fell to 10.9 percent in the third quarter, marking a significant dip from 13.3 percent in the previous quarter.
It is the latest indicator of a radical turn for the better in the economy.
The figure translated into 77,000 people being out of work and marked a sharp decline from 15.5 percent jobless rate in the third quarter of 2010, according to official data published by Statistics Estonia on Monday.
Data showed that 44,000 of the total number of jobless people have been looking for a work for a year or more, while some 28,000 of them had been seeking employment for two years or more.
Statistics Estonia also noted a decline in the number of unemployed men since 2010 when men accounted for almost two-thirds of the unemployed at a time when joblessness peaked at near 20 percent in the state hard hit by the global crisis.
"Since then, unemployment started to decrease more rapidly among men compared to women and in the third quarter of the current year unemployed men numbered even less than unemployed women," it said.
"The unemployment rate of men was 10.6 percent and that of women 11.3 percent in the third quarter," it added.
The nation of 1.3 million people, which joined the EU in 2004 and the eurozone in January, has emerged from a 14.1-percent economic contraction in 2009 -- one of the world's sharpest recessions.
Estonian authorities have forecast 7.0-percent growth in 2011.
The European Commission recently predicted 8.0-percent growth fuelled by strong exports this year but warned that growth would fall to 3.2 percent next year and 4.0 percent in 2013 owing to an expected downturn in European on the heels of the eurozone's debt crisis.