TALLINN — Statistics Estonia reported Friday that the country’s unemployment made the first quarterly decrease in two years down to a still very high 18.6 percent.

An estimated 128,000 people were jobless in the second quarter of 2010. In the first quarter this year the number was record-high, when 137,000 people were without work and the jobless rate was 19.8 percent. The small decrease in the second quarter indicates that the recovery of Estonia’s export industries has done little to spur large-scale job growth in the smallest Baltic states, which was hammered by the economic crisis along with Latvia and Lithuania.

According to the statisics bureau, unemployment is much more serious problem among men than women. In the second quarter the unemployment rate among menn fell slightly to 22.6 percent, but among women who are more often employed by the public sector than the private sector, the rate is only 14.8 percent.

This article is free to view. To read Baltic Reports’ subscription-only articles, click here.