Minister for Finance Prof. Edward Scicluna welcomed the figures published by the National Statistics office on Monday 30th June 2014, which confirmed a drop in Registered Unemployed compared to the same period last year.

While last year the number of persons registering for work with the Employment and Training Corporation (ETC) stood at 7,292, in May 2014, this figure dropped to 7,141, a decrease of 151 persons.

 

 

This also represents a drop of 648 persons from January 2014. In fact, the NSO figures also show that Registered Unemployment is on a sustained downward trend, which has been evidenced over the past five months.

In particular, decreases in registered unemployed were recorded among the majority of age groups, including among those had been registered as unemployed for less than 21 weeks, those who are aged 45 and over, and also disabled persons.

Minister Scicluna remarked, “While we welcome these positive statistics, as a Ministry we still maintain that the proper picture for gauging unemployment is through the unemployment rate as published by Eurostat. This, in point of fact, has fallen to 6% during the first quarter of this year.”

 

 

 

    

    

– Monday, 30th June, 2014