THE JOBLESS rate in Slovakia fell to 9.75 percent at the end of September, down 0.10 percentage points from the previous month, the Labour Bureau announced on October 18.
The unemployment rate, calculated from the number of people registered with labour offices and ready to take a job immediately (249,446), has been falling since January this year, when it was at 11.82 percent.
Compared with September 2005, the jobless rate was 1.45 points lower, equivalent to 40,171 people.
The unemployment rate calculated from the total of all job seekers was 10.94 percent after nine months in 2006, a drop of 1.73 percentage points year-on-year.
The highest unemployment rate, 16.05 percent, was in central Slovakia's Banská Bystrica region, while the Košice region reported a jobless rate of 15.60 percent.
The jobless rate in the Bratislava region was just 2.54 percent, the SITA news agency wrote.