The number of people registering for work last month stood at 5,568, a drop of more than 1,700 over the same month last year.

The National Statistics Office said falls in registered unemployment were recorded among all age groups.

The largest was for people who had been registering for employment for over a year.

The largest share of men on the unemployment register sought occupations as crafts and related trade workers (17.6 per cent), whereas a lot of women were looking for jobs as clerical support workers (26.7 per cent).

The number of people with a disability who were registering for work also decreased by 117 to 419. Men accounted for 81.4 per cent of total registrants with a disability.

The registered unemployed rate in December stood at 3.7 per cent of the labour supply (excluding part-time employment), and varied from 4.4 per cent among men to 2.4 per cent among women.

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