STOCKHOLM: Recent Swedish jobless figures — which that have shown a sharp rise in unemployment and led to calls for the central bank to postpone planned interest rate hikes - are suspect, the country’s Statistics Office said on Thursday.
It said it had identified problems in the way it has gathered data for the unemployment survey, with numbers affected as far back as June 2018.
This had led to a slight overestimation of the numbers of employed people in 2018, and an underestimate since summer 2019.
The problems also led to the unemployment rate being underestimated at the start of the year and then overestimated in more recent months.
Unemployment has risen faster than expected in the last few months, prompting calls for the Riksbank to drop plans for a rate hike late this year or early next.
Several rate-setters had already called into question the reliability of the labour market figures.
On Thursday, the Statistics Office published figures showing headline unemployment unchanged at 7.1 per cent and at 7.4 per cent on a seasonally adjusted basis.— Reuters
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