Mothers’ employment rate grew between 2021 and 2023

Mothers of children aged under three increasingly often employed

In 2023, the number of mothers aged 20 to 59 was 495,000, which was 28,000 lower than in 2021. The number of employed mothers was 404,000 in 2023, which was 9,000 lower than in 2021. However, the employment rate of mothers with children aged under 18 rose by 2.9 percentage points from 2021 to 2023, which was partly caused by the decrease in the number of mothers.

The employment rate went up most among mothers whose youngest child was aged under three. For these mothers, the employment rate was 60.9 per cent in 2021 and 65.9 per cent in 2023. The employment rate grew by 0.9 percentage points among those women who do not have children aged under 18.

The number of mothers in the inactive population decreased by 15,000 persons from 2021 to 2023.

The employment rate of fathers with children aged under 18 was 90.7 per cent in 2023, which was 0.5 percentage points lower than in 2021. The employment rate of men aged 20 to 59 without children aged under 18 was 75.9 per cent, or 0.8 percentage points higher than in 2021.

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 2023. 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.