Working Life Barometer in the Baltic Countries 2002 (pdf) - mol.fi

248
is particularly great. In the view of many, the employment situation in a year's
time may be much worse. There are very few who think that it will be much
better.
In Lithuania in 1998, there was a lot of scepticism as regards development in
employment. Now, though, the situation has evened out. In 2002, the expectations
in Estonia concerning employment turned out to be more negative than
in the other two countries. Only 15 per cent of the Estonians expect that employment
will improve during the coming year, and 50 per cent believe that it
will deteriorate. Only one per cent expect the situation to be much better in a
year's time. By contrast, many times that number - 14 per cent - reckon that it
will be much worse.
The development in the economy of one's own workplace during the coming
year is viewed considerably more optimistically than the general employment
development. For the workplace economy also, the expectations are the most
positive in Latvia. Future trends in this aspect are clearly regarded the most
unfavourably in Lithuania.
In both Estonia and Latvia, positive expectations have increased during the
three years. The development in Lithuania has been the opposite. There, in
1998, one-fifth reckoned that the economy at their own workplace was getting
worse. Now, the corresponding proportion has grown to over one-third, 34 per
cent. The percentage of favourable expectations, however, has stayed more or
less the same. The Lithuanians' expectations are somewhat contradictory, because
they believe more than before that employment in general will improve,
but at the same time their belief in the economy of their own workplace has
weakened. In Estonia and Latvia, the evaluation goes in the same direction for
both aspects.
Men's and women's expectations as regards employment differ only a little
from each other. In all three countries, both the male and the female workers
have estimated less often than before that the general employment situation is
getting worse. Among the men, the change has been slightly greater than for
the women. With the exception of Lithuania, the changes in positive assessments
have been small for both males and females.