Unemployment in Hungary averaged 8.4 per cent in the three months to the end of January, the country's official statistical office reported on Friday, according to DPA. The figures were released just as the European Union's number- crunching wing Eurostat revealed a seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 7.6 per cent in the union as a whole in January. The number of Hungarians registered as unemployed aged between 15 and 64, the range used for comparisons within the EU, rose by 14,000 from the previous quarter to 350,600. The number of people in the same age range who are actively employed was 3.81 million, down 40,600 from the previous quarter. This represents just 56.1 per cent of Hungarians of working age - one of the lowest levels of employment in the EU. The Hungarian government recently announced that it wants to introduce means testing for the tens of thousands of Hungarians living from welfare benefits or who have taken early retirement on medical grounds. Almost 30,000 jobs have been axed across Hungary since the economic crisis hit the region last October. Hungary's official economic statistics office forecast on Monday that 105,000 jobs wou | c=Mt this year.
