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29% of people in Estonia are estimated to be affiliated with a religion. This figure has remained unchanged over the last three population censuses. However, the proportion of people who do not feel an affiliation to any religion has increased – from 54% in 2011 to 58% in 2021. The most prevalent religion in Estonia is Orthodox Christianity.

Urmet Lee, who became the Director General of Statistics Estonia at the beginning of August, assures that we are ready for the big e-census of Estonia. We asked him to explain what is going to be different this time and why everyone should participate in the population census.

The places where people live have been recorded in one way or another for centuries. Previously, the place of registration could have been a church, municipality government, city address board, housing board or the Population Register. In recent decades, developed countries have found that register data are usually more accurate than survey data, and so population censuses have also begun to use them. Back in 2011, eight European Union countries conducted the census on a register basis: in addition to the Nordic countries, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Slovenia.

Most Estonian residents intend to participate in the Population and Housing Census, which begins at the end of the year. 71% of them prefer completing the census questionnaire online, as revealed by a recent survey of Kantar Emor.

Statistics Estonia invites all Estonian residents to fill in the census e-questionnaire by Saturday. So far (by January 16), 450,000 persons, or around 35% of the Estonian population, have been enumerated based on the short five-minute questionnaire.

Statistics Estonia's short-term labour market statistics show that over the past year and a half, there have been fewer young people aged 20–29 working in both the broader information and communication sector and the more specific field of computer programming. While in previous years the field of computer programming was growing mainly because of young people, in the past year their numbers have fallen.

Märt Umbleja, leading analyst at Statistics Estonia, pointed out that the last time the dwelling price index fell compared with the previous quarter was in the third quarter of 2023. “Compared with the second quarter of 2024, the prices of apartments decreased by 1% in areas bordering Tallinn and in Tartu and Pärnu cities, and by 7.7% in the rest of Estonia. In Tallinn, apartment prices continued to rise, increasing by 0.9% from the previous quarter,” Umbleja noted. Compared with the third quarter of 2023, apartment prices went up by 5.8% and the prices of houses by 8.1%. The monetary volume

Helga Laurmaa, leading analyst at Statistics Estonia, said that 95,000 foreign and 110,000 domestic tourists were accommodated in Estonia in January 2025. Year on year, the number of domestic tourists fell, as it did in several months in 2024. The number of tourists in January 2025 was 8% smaller than in January of 2020, the last pre-pandemic peak month. “Compared with the January before the crisis, there were 15,000 more domestic tourists accommodated, while the number of foreign tourists was lower by 33,000,” added Laurmaa. 30,000 tourists arrived from Finland, representing 32% of all