Women push jobless rate up in September

Malta registered a slight increase of 0.3 per cent in its rate of unemployment last September when compared to the same month of the previous year.

According to statistics just issued by Eurostat, the EU's statistics arm, the level of unemployment in Malta stood at 7.8 per cent in September. A year earlier, Malta had 7.5 per cent unemployment.

An increase of 1.5 percentage points was registered among women while a decrease of 0.2 per cent was recorded among men.

According to Eurostat, Malta's level of unemployment in September was 0.8 per cent less than the average in the EU25 which stood at 8.6 per cent. Malta is now placed at the 15th position in the EU employment table, with 10 member states having higher unemployment levels than Malta.

According to the EU statistics for September, the lowest rates of unemployment were registered in Ireland (4.3 per cent), the Netherlands (4.6 per cent), the United Kingdom (4.6 per cent in July), Denmark (4.7 per cent) and Austria (5.2 per cent). Unemployment rates were highest in Poland (17.7 per cent), Slovakia (16.4 per cent), Greece (9.9 per cent in June), France (9.4 per cent), Spain (9.3 per cent) and Latvia (8.8 per cent).

Among the member states, 15 recorded a decrease in their unemployment rate over a year, three remained stable and seven reported an increase. The largest relative decreases were observed in Lithuania (10.5 to 7.6 per cent), Estonia (8.9 to 7.1 per cent), Spain (10.8 to 9.3 per cent), Denmark (5.3 to 4.7 per cent) and Latvia (9.8 to 8.8 per cent). Cyprus (5.4 per cent to 6.4 per cent), Hungary (6.1 per cent to 7.2 per cent), Luxembourg (4.9 per cent to 5.6 per cent) and Belgium (7.9 per cent to 8.4 per cent) registered the highest relative increases.