Information from the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC) indicated that more people were looking for work during the Summer Holiday, causing the unemployment rate for May-July 2013 to increase slightly by 0.1 percentage point from April-June, at 1.9%; the underemployment rate held stable at 0.7%.

Total labour force was 366,000 in May-July 2013 and the labour force participation rate stood at 72.6%. Total employment reached 359,000, up by 1,900 from the previous period. Analysed by industry, employment in the Construction sector posed a marked increase of 1,500.

Number of the unemployed was 7,000, up by 500 from April-June; fresh labour force entrants searching for their first job accounted for 10.2% of the total unemployed, an increase of 4.9 percentage points.

In comparison with May-July 2012, the labour force participation rate rose by 0.4 percentage points, while the unemployment rate and the underemployment rate dropped by 0.1 and 0.2 percentage points respectively.