PRELIMINARY figures from the Labour Ministry suggest that the unemployment rate grew slightly in December 2003 to 15.6 percent - 1.4 percent more than that of the previous month.
The daily Pravda wrote that there were 453,282 unemployed people in Slovakia in December, some 33,000 more than in November.
But, despite the monthly unemployment growth, the year-on-year figure grew in the other direction: it recorded 50,795 fewer unemployed people than had been registered one year ago.
