Number of jobless down in December

Registered unemployment in December dropped by 218 persons when compared to the same month last year, the National Statistics Office said.

The number of unemployed persons thus reached 7,161 persons, the NSO said, quoting the Employment and Training Corporation as the source of all data. The unemployment rates for December are not available because the data on the labour supply for this month is unavailable.

The NSO said that in August 2006, the registered unemployment rate stood at 4.9 per cent of the labour supply implying no change from the same month of 2005. On a gender basis, the unemployment rate for men stood at 5.3, while the unemployment rate for women stood at 3.9 per cent.

The long-term unemployment rate - referring to people who have been registering for work for more than 12 months - stood at 1.8 per cent.

The unemployment rate among older workers (45 years of age and over) was 3.8 per cent while the unemployment rate among young people (under 25 years) stood at 7.9 per cent.