Can the low unemployment rate of Swedish speakers in Finland be attributed to structural factors?

A previous study has shown that the substantially lower unemployment rate of Swedish speakers in Finland, as compared with Finnish speakers, cannot be attributed to demographic and socio-economic characteristics. This paper studies the role of structural factors. Using cross-section and longitudinal data of the total population, we find that Swedish speakers benefit from constituting the local majority, but that they have significantly lower unemployment rates than the Finnish speakers also in Finnish dominated areas. Industrial structure and family-related factors are important determinants of unemployment incidence, but they can to a fairly limited extent be related to the unemployment gap.