Unemployment has gone up for the third month in a row, surpassing the 7,000 mark in October, figures out yesterday showed.

The increase of 475 is seven per cent up over the previous October, according to the National Statistics Office.

A total of 258 men and 217 women lost their jobs and started registering with the Employment and Training Corporation in October. In Malta, unemployment went up by 448 and Gozo by 27.

Unemployment has fluctuated this year but has generally been above the 2011 average.

The previous peak this year was reached in March when nearly 7,000 people were registering for work with the ETC.

The latest figures showed that unemployment among women went up by 15 per cent with the NSO describing this as “a marked increase”. The largest segment of jobless women to witness an increase was the over 45s.

When compared with the previous October, unemployment among men and women was up across all age groups except those under 20.

The figures showed that more than 3,000 people had been registering for less than 21 weeks and some 2,500 for more than a year.

The NSO also released the unemployment rate for June – this is normally available four months after the unemployment statistics are out and is calculated as a percentage of the labour supply. It was 4.2 per cent.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.