Data published by Eurostat yesterday show that unemployment figures remained stable in September when compared to the preceding month.

The EU's statistical arm said Malta registered an unemployment rate of 7.2 per cent last month, the same as in August, but 1.4 per cent more when compared to a year earlier.

Despite the fact Malta has been hit by the global recession and unemployment has risen in the past year, the island is performing relatively well on the jobs front compared to the rest of the eurozone.

Across the 16-member eurozone, unemployment continued to rise in September, reaching 9.7 per cent, nearly two percentage points higher than in Malta.

Malta registered a slight increase in the number of unemployed males over August (8.1 from 8 per cent) and a drop in youth unemployment (14.8 from 14.9 per cent) while the number of females looking for a job remained stable at 6.8 per cent.

On a general level, Eurostat said that in September the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in The Netherlands (3.6 per cent) and Austria (4.8 per cent) while the highest rates were those in Latvia (19.7 per cent) and Spain (19.3 per cent).