The employment rate is rising and it is now just over three percentage points short of the EU average, the government said.

Reacting to comments by the PN, the government said that according to the  Labour Force Survey, the employment rate in the third quarter of last year was  61.3%, from  59.6% in the previous year.

The government said more needed to be done to reach the high employment rates of the Scandinavian countries, currently 76%, but the performance of the sector was not as bad as it was being made out to be.It said that under the former administration, 2,262 full-time jobs in manufacturing were lost. In contrast, between March and August last year manufacturing jobs were up by 169.

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