Unemployment
05. Jul 2022
Unemployment rate in April was 0.9%

There were 265 full-time unemployed people in April 2022

Unemployed people are registered as unemployed with the Faroese unemployment system and the social services, fully available to the job market and actively seeking work.

The graph below shows the unemployment rate and the trend. The semi-transparent line represents the unemployment rate, and the solid line shows the unemployment trend.

In April, the unemployment rate was 0.9% (265 full-time unemployed people). A total of 328 people were registered as unemployed.

For comparison, the April 2021 unemployment rate was 1.5%. The trend shows that unemployment has been on a gradual decline in the past few years. The rate went up slightly in 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic, but it has now gone down again.

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In April, 0.9% of the male and 1.5% of the female labour force were unemployed. In April 2021, the rate was 1.6% for men and 1.4% for women.

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The map below shows the unemployment rates in each region. In April, Norðoyggjar and Eysturoy had the lowest unemployment rate at 0.5%, and Suðuroy had the highest at 2.1%.

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The graph below shows how long people have been unemployed. In April, 17.1% of the unemployed people had been out of work for more than a year, compared to 10.5% in April 2021.

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Why is there a two-month lag in the figures?

Many delayed entries are filed after the end of the registered month. A two-month lag helps ensure accuracy in the statistics.

About unemployment

An unemployed person is defined as someone without a job, fully available to the job market and actively seeking work, aged between 16 and 66 and registered as unemployed in the Faroese unemployment system and the social services in accordance with the above conditions.

Two categories are used in unemployment statistics: full-time unemployment and affected by unemployment.

Affected by unemployment: The number of people who have been unemployed for one or more days in a month.

Full-time unemployment: Since not everyone is unemployed every day of a given month, all individuals affected by unemployment are converted to full-time unemployed. For example, a person who has been unemployed for half a month counts as 0.5 full-time unemployed.

Unemployment rate: The full-time unemployment rate relative to the size of the labour force.