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1. Introduction

This Labour Force Survey publication contains statistical data on families and work. The data are based on interview data derived from the household section of the Labour Force Survey. The publication is focused on the age group of those aged 20 to 59 as concerns both families and persons without children used as the comparison group, because over 99 per cent of the parents of children aged under 18 belong to this age group. In this review, people without children are those who do not have children aged under 18 living in their household.

At the end of 2013, families with children numbered 576,000. Families with children are families that have at least one child aged under 18 living in the same household. At the turn of the year, the average number of children living in a family with underage children was 1.84. Sixty per cent of families with children were families of married couples and 19 per cent those of cohabiting couples. Around one-fifth of families with children were single-parent families. (Source: Population and Cause of Death Statistics, Statistics Finland.)

This publication examines the changes that have occurred in the employment of mothers and fathers of families with children and in the use of family leaves between 2009 and 2013. The appendix tables contain data for all of these years.

In addition to persons that are working, persons on maternity or paternity leave from work, as well as persons whose absence from work has lasted under three months are classified as employed in the Labour Force Survey. Thus, especially in the case of mothers of very small children the employed contain plenty of mothers who are actually at home looking after a child. Respectively, mothers on child care leave are mostly classified as persons outside the labour force because the care leave is often taken after the maternity leave and parental leave, which lengthens the total duration of the leave. Sections 2 and 3 of this publication describe the employment of the parents of families with children and Sections 4 and 5 explain their actual activity in more detail.

The concepts used in this review and the household data for the Labour Force Survey are described in more detail in Sections 6 and 7.

Source: Labour Force Survey 2013. Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Tarja Nieminen 029 551 3561, Anna Pärnänen 029 551 3795, tyovoimatutkimus@stat.fi

Director in charge: Riitta Harala

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Updated 7.10.2014