The unemployment rate rose 0.04 percentage points to 4.36 percent last month due to a rise in job resignations and business closures, the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting and Statistics (DGBAS) said in a statement released yesterday.
However, the jobless rate for last month was down from 4.67 percent a year earlier, making it the lowest figure for the same month over the past five years, the DGBAS said.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the jobless rate was 4.11 percent last month, down 0.04 percent from the previous month and down 0.28 percent from a year earlier, according to the statistics agency.
The number of people out of work rose by 5,000 to 454,000 last month, with the eligible workforce at 10.42 million.
The jobless rate was 12.11 percent for people aged between 15 and 24 last month, while the rate was 3.9 percent for people aged between 25 and 44, the agency said.
In the agency's announcement, last month's figure was compared with Germany's 11.4 percent, France's 9.9 percent, Canada's 6.8 percent, Hong Kong's 5.7 percent, the US' 4.9 percent, Japan's 4.4 percent, South Korea's 3.7 percent and Singapore's 3.4 percent.
For the first eight months of the year, the average unemployment rate was 4.19 percent, down 0.33 percent from a year earlier, the agency said.
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