Fewer mothers in the inactive population in 2022

Employment rate of mothers of small children rose slightly

The employment rate of mothers with children aged under 18 rose slightly from 2021 to 2022, which is caused by a decrease in the number of the population in the group concerned. The number of employed mothers remained almost unchanged.

The employment rate went up most among mothers whose youngest child was aged three to six. For these mothers, the employment rate was 79.7 per cent in 2021 and 82.9 per cent in 2022. The employment rate remained almost unchanged for women without children aged under 18.

The number of mothers in the inactive population was lower in 2022 compared to 2021. Most change occurred for mothers with one child, whose number in the inactive population decreased by 8,000 in 2022. At the same time, their employment rate rose by 4.1 percentage points and their unemployment rate declined by 1.9 percentage points from one year back.

Matters to be considered in the interpretation of database tables in the household section

The StatFin tables updated in connection with this release, based on interview data from the household module of the Labour Force Survey, contain the time series for 2013 to 2022. The Labour Force Survey was renewed at the beginning of 2021, when the time series were corrected retrospectively in accordance with the new estimation method. In the correction procedure, the change in the definition of an employed person was taken into account on the level of the entire target group of women aged 15 to 74. By contrast, the time series revised employment data on the subset level of women is associated with uncertainty due to the correction procedure, and the data for earlier years are not fully comparable with the figures produced since 2021.