Finland surpassed Spain as the country with the most unemployment in the EU in November
In November, Finland became the country in the European Union with the highest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, with 10.6%. surpassing Spain for the first timewhich registered two tenths less, according to data published this Thursday by the community statistics office, Eurostat.
This historical surprise It occurred after Finland increased its unemployment rate by two tenths compared to October, while Spain reduced it by one tenth, to 10.4%.
According to the Ministry of Employment and Economic Affairs of the Nordic country, the increase in unemployment is partly due to the structural reforms promoted by the Government to reduce debt and the search for productivity growth by companies.
“The increase in productivity has been sought through cost cuttinginstead of expanding operations and investing,” the undersecretary of state of the aforementioned ministry, Elina Pylkkänen, told YLE national television.
Cost cutting has resulted in a reduction of jobs in both the private and public sectors, which, together with the stagnation of the economy, has caused Finland to have the highest unemployment rate in the last fifteen years.
Furthermore, in recent months there has been an increase in people searching access the labor marketincluding many migrants, while the number of job offers has reduced.
The Bank of Finland predicts that the Nordic country’s economy grow 0.8% this yearthree tenths less than the estimates of the Ministry of Finance.
Eurostat published in a statement that Finland’s unemployment rate in November was 10.1%, although it clarified in a note that, for this country, as for Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden, used trend data instead of seasonally adjusted ones, as in the rest of the EU nations.
