Analytics, Employment, Estonia, Financial Services, Labour-market

The number of persons with limited capacity for work was 10,037, making up 30% of all registered unemployed, the Unemployment Insurance Fund said.

Growth in the number of unemployed in January is not unusual because year-end marks the end of many fixed-term labor contracts and the number of lay-offs also increases at the end of the year.

"The number of registered unemployed increasing in January was also influenced by the administrative reform because some of the people who lost their jobs as a result of reorganization in municipality, town or county governments registered as unemployed," head of the Unemployment Insurance Fund's analysis department Margit Paulus said. She added that while the number increased 7% compared to December 2017, it is still lower than in January 2017.

The redundancy benefit was paid to 1,444 people in January and more than half of the people were employees of city, municipality or county governments. The sum total paid out in redundancy benefits was 2.9 million euros.

The rate of registered unemployment remained the highest in East-Viru County with 9.8% and the lowest in Harju County with 3.8%. Unskilled workers made up the biggest part of the registered jobless who had previously worked, accounting for 23% of the total, ahead of skilled workers and craftsmen at 18% and service and sales personnel at 17%.

During the month 4,333 new offers were added to the job offers available via the Unemployment Insurance Fund. The number of the job offers added during the month was 58% higher compared to the previous month and 4% lower compared to January 2017.

The Unemployment Insurance Fund had a total of 7,578 jobs on offer during the month. The biggest part of jobs on offer were for service and sales personnel with 20%, skilled workers and craftsmen with 20%, and equipment and machinery operators and assembly workers with 18% of all jobs.