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Austrian unemployment rises slightly after new calculation method

Xinhua, March 20, 2015 Adjust font size:

The Austrian statistical office, Statistics Austria, adopted a new method for calculating employment and unemployment data, leading to an increase in the 2014 unemployment rate from 5 percent to 5.6 percent, it was announced Thursday.

The agency said the new method is an improvement over the previous one, and that the most noticeable change had been made to the "non-response group" in surveys, that relates to people who choose not to take part in them, who are now re-categorized and weighted differently.

Statistics Austria said this was because the segment of survey respondents typically had a higher-than-average rate of unemployment.

It has thus recalculated all employment-related statistics going back to 2004, which has resulted in an average of 0.6 percent higher unemployment rate.

The changes are expected to see Austria's ranking as an EU leader in unemployment statistics slip in some instances. Endit