Mauritius’ Central Statistics Office (CSO) has in dicated that the unemployment rate for the second quarter of 2008 stood at 7.4 p e r cent, down from the rate of 8.2 per cent recorded the previous quarter.
In its September 2008 bulletin, issued Tuesday, the CSO said the 41,100 unemploy ed comprised 13,600 males (33 per cent) and 27,500 females (67 per cent).
About 16,000 or 39 per cent of the unemployed were below 25 years — about 5,800 or 42 per cent of them are males and 37 per cent or 10,300 females.
About 45 per cent (18,600) of the unemployed are single.
Some 8,500 or 21 per cent had not passed the Certificate of Primary Education (C PE) examination or equivalent and a further 18,600 (45 per cent) did not have th e Cambridge School Certificate (SC) or its equivalent.
The CSO further indicated that among the 943,300 persons aged 16 years and over in the second quarter of 2008, about 558,900 or 59 per cent were economically ac t ive, with 517,800 (55 per cent) having a job and 41,100 (4 per cent) unemployed.
The remaining 384,400 (41 per cent) persons were inactive.
It added that the primary sector, comprising agriculture, mining and quarrying, provided jobs for about 8 per cent of the working population.
The secondary sector, which includes manufacturing, electricity, water and const ruction, employed another 33 per cent and the tertiary sector, which covers trad e , hotels and restaurants, transport and all the other service industries, the re m aining 59 per cent.
The majority, or 80 per cent of workers were employees and the remaining 20 per cent were working in their own or family enterprises with 18 per cent as either e mployers or own account workers and two per cent as contributing family workers.
The average number of hours worked per week, including over-time but excluding a ll leaves and lunch time, was 41.4 with men reporting having worked 43.3 hours o n average and women, 37.6 hours.
The number of persons aged 16 years and over, not forming part of the labour for ce (inactive population) was estimated at 384,400 (108,700 males and 275,700 fem a les).
The inactive population comprised of 47 per cent of homemakers (178,700), 22 pe r cent (83,200) of retired or old persons, 20 per cent (77,700) of students and n early eight per cent (28,700) of sick or disabled persons.
