Eesti in brief - 2012-12-20

According to the Statistics Board, there are a total of 4,438 villages in Estonia, the majority of which have fewer than a hundred residents, reports National Broadcasting. Twelve villages have more than 1,000 permanent residents and 645 have 100-999 residents, show data from the population census of 2011. 3,781 villages have fewer than 100 permanent residents and 327 of them have less than three permanent residents. In the course of the population and housing census, 102 villages were found to have no permanent residents whatsoever. According to the Statistics Board, Estonia is relatively sparsely populated in comparison with other European countries; an average of 30 persons per square kilometer reside in the territory. The majority of Estonian residents live in cities.
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In a post on the Statistics Blog, the Statistics Board reveals that the impact of the economic crisis appears with a slight delay on the labor market, reports Postimees Online. It was not before 2010, when the share of males in the total number of wage-earning employees fell from 47 percent to 45 percent, which was the lowest level of the past ten years. In October 2010, there were a total of 218,000 male wage-earning employees in Estonia, which was 47,500 less than in October 2008. The number of male wage-earning employees fell in all age groups, but most of all in the age group of those under the age of 30 (26 percent) and the least in the age group 50-59 (14 percent).
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According to a Eurobarometer survey, Estonian residents’ satisfaction rating with their public services provided by the state is high and closer to Scandinavian countries and Western Europe than to Eastern and Central European country indicators, reports National Broadcasting. Satisfaction with public services provided by the state was assessed on the scale from -10 to 10. In Estonia, the satisfaction index for public services is 1.2, which is relatively positive in the context of the survey. Residents of Luxembourg are the most satisfied with the public services: the index there is 2.4. In three EU member states, the satisfaction index was below -4: Greece, Italy and Romania.