The unemployment rate in the euro zone remained unchanged at 7.8 percent in September, said the European Union's (EU) statistical agency Eurostat on Friday.

But the figure, adjusted for seasonal factors, was lower than the 8.5 percent registered a year earlier.

Since peaking at 8.9 percent in September 2004, the unemployment rate in the 12-nation euro zone has steadily slipped as the economy has gathered pace.

The unemployment rate in the 25-nation EU also remained unchanged from the previous month, standing at 8.0 percent. It was 8.7 percent in September 2005.

Among individual countries, the lowest rates were registered in Denmark at 3.5 percent, the Netherlands at 4.0 percent and Ireland at 4.2 percent. Unemployment rates were highest in Poland at 14.1 percent and Slovakia at 12.8 percent.

Nineteen EU member states recorded a fall in their unemployment rates over a year and five reported an increase.

The largest relative falls were reported in Estonia (from 7.2 percent to 4.4 percent), Denmark (from 4.6 percent to 3.5 percent), and Latvia (from 8.7 percent to 6.8 percent), while Britain registered the highest increase from 4.6 percent in July 2005 to 5.6 percent in July 2006.

The unemployment rates in Luxembourg and Hungary also rose from 4.7 percent and 7.3 percent a year earlier to 4.9 percent and 7.6 percent in September this year.

From a gender perspective, the unemployment rate for males fell from 7.4 percent to 6.7 percent between September 2005 and September 2006 in the euro zone and from 7.9 percent to 7.1 percent in the EU. The female unemployment rate also declined from 10.0 percent to 9.3 percent in the euro area and from 9.8 percent to 9.1 percent in the EU.

In September 2006, the unemployment rate for under-25s was 17.0 percent in the euro zone and 17.5 percent in the EU. In September 2005, it was 17.7 percent and 18.5 percent respectively.

Eurostat estimates that 11.5 million people were unemployed in the euro zone and 17.4 million in the EU as a whole in September.

Source: Xinhua