The number of people trying to find a job continued to shrink in January as the island sustained its robust performance compared to the rest of the EU.

New Eurostat figures show that over the 12 months to January, Malta managed to slash its unemployment rate by 1.1 per cent, the second best performance among the 27 member states.

Eurostat said only Estonia managed to perform better, reducing its unemployment rate by 1.8 per cent, but the Baltic country is still left with an unemployment level twice as high as Malta’s.

The island’s unemployment rate in January stood at 6.1 per cent, slightly lower than in December 2009, when it was 6.2 per cent, and significantly lower than the 7.2 per cent registered in January 2010.

Malta has managed to reduce its unemployment rates across the board with the best performance being seen among people under 25 years of age, reduced by 3.5 per cent over the past year and down to 11 per cent in January.

Both female and male unemployment rates levelled out at 6.1 per cent by the end of the first month of this year, from 6.9 per cent among women and 7.7 per cent among men in January 2010.

The lowest unemployment rates were recorded in the Netherlands and Austria (both 4.3 per cent) and Luxembourg (4.7 per cent), and the highest in Spain (20.4 per cent), Latvia (18.3 per cent) and Lithuania (17.4 per cent).

Compared with a year ago, the unemployment rate fell in 11 member states, remained stable in two and increased in 14.

The highest increases were registered in Greece (9.7 to 12.9 per cent), Hungary (11.0 to 12.6 per cent) and Lithuania (15.9 to 17.4 per cent).

In January 2011, the unemployment rate was nine per cent in the US and 4.9 per cent in Japan.