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Business

Optimism despite unchanged unemployment figures

admin
July 31st, 2014


This article is more than 10 years old.

No change from May to June, but analysts are hopeful

Today the national statistics office, Danmarks Statistik, announced that unemployment was unchanged from May to June, remaining at 133,900 or 5.1 percent of the workforce.

Still positive
Erik Bjørsted, the chief analyst at Arbejderbevægelsens Erhvervsråd, the labour market policy institute, told Berlingske Business that, despite the apparent lack of movement, the situation is improving.

“The employment figures partly suggest that the fall in unemployment we saw in the first quarter of the year isn’t just because of technicalities, resulting from the dagpenge and kontanthjælp benefits reform,” he said.

“More people in fact got into work. At the same time, more positions are being advertised and the number of layoff warnings is also limited.”

Peter Bojsen Jakobsen, an economist at Sydbank, told Berlingske that, while there are 14,329 fewer unemployed people than at the beginning of the year, some of them have registered themselves as now being out of the workforce and are out of the statistics for this reason.

He agrees, however, that things are looking good for the job market. “All in all, we’re positive about the developments in the job market and expect a further fall in unemployment in the course of the second half of the year,” he said.


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A survey carried out by Megafon for TV2 has found that 71 percent of parents have handed over children to daycare in spite of them being sick.

Moreover, 21 percent of those surveyed admitted to medicating their kids with paracetamol, such as Panodil, before sending them to school.

The FOLA parents’ organisation is shocked by the findings.

“I think it is absolutely crazy. It simply cannot be that a child goes to school sick and plays with lots of other children. Then we are faced with the fact that they will infect the whole institution,” said FOLA chair Signe Nielsen.

Pill pushers
At the Børnehuset daycare institution in Silkeborg a meeting was called where parents were implored not to bring their sick children to school.

At Børnehuset there are fears that parents prefer to pack their kids off with a pill without informing teachers.

“We occasionally have children who that they have had a pill for breakfast,” said headteacher Susanne Bødker. “You might think that it is a Panodil more than a vitamin pill, if it is a child who has just been sick, for example.”

Parents sick and tired
Parents, when confronted, often cite pressure at work as a reason for not being able to stay at home with their children.

Many declare that they simply cannot take another day off, as they are afraid of being fired.

Allan Randrup Thomsen, a professor of virology at KU, has heavily criticised the parents’ actions, describing the current situation as a “vicious circle”.

“It promotes the spread of viruses, and it adds momentum to a cycle where parents are pressured by high levels of sick-leave. If they then choose to send the children to daycare while they are still recovering, they keep the epidemic going in daycares, and this in turn puts a greater burden on the parents.”