Estonia's Remarkable Lowering Of Unemployment

A few years ago, Estonia was mired in a depression almost as bad as that in Greece, with unemployment rising to 20%. But instead of whining, rioting and striking like the Greeks have done, the Estonians decided to try to become productive instead, and because of this the unemployment rate has fallen dramatically and was at 8.3% in April according to Eurostat, significantly below the averages for both the EU and the Euro area.

To some extent this was achieved by emigration, mainly to neighboring and linguistically related (Estonian and Finnish are both Finno-Ugric languages) Finland. but mostly by a 12% increase in employment.

Because Estonia's unemployment rate is no longer higher than Finland's, emigration will almost certainly drop significantly, but not end entirely as wages are still much higher in Finland.