Just under half of all people aged between 15 and 64 were employed in the three months to September earning an average gross salary of €14,466.

The average annual salary went up from the €13,801 recorded in the same period a year before.

The number of employed people was estimated at 165,152 while inactive people between 15 and 64 such as stay-at-home mothers and students totalled 172,442.

The figures were published yesterday by the National Statistics Office as part of the labour force survey for the third quarter of 2010.

According to the survey, the number of unemployed people stood at 12,054, marginally higher than the 11,901 registered the year before.

The unemployment rate – the number of unemployed people as a percentage of the labour force – stood at 6.8 per cent, the same as in the previous year.

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