OREANDA-NEWS. November 18, 2014. Unemployment ticked up by half percent in the third quarter, to stand at 7.5 percent with 51,000 Estonians looking for work, Statistics Estonia reported.

However, compared to 2013's third quarter, the percentage of unemployed declined slightly. The unemployment rate a year ago was at 7.8 percent.

Unemployment increased in the third quarter mainly due to the increased number of the short-term unemployed, which is defined as people who had been looking for a job for less than a year. They numbered 29,000 in the third quarter, a rise of 6,000 compared to the second quarter.

The number of the long-term unemployed (those people who had been looking for a job for one year or longer) has been stable for the last five quarters and totaled 22,000. The long-term unemployment rate was 3.3 percent in the third quarter, the report stated.

The labor force participation rate, which shows the total share of the labor force between the ages of 15-71 in the population that were employed or unemployed, was 69.1 percent in the third quarter. It was 68 percent in the same quarter of the previous year, and notably lower 20 years ago, in 2004 (63 percent).

The estimated number of employed persons was 634,000 in the third quarter, which is 4,000 persons more than in the second, and 7,000 persons more than in the third quarter of 2013.