Housewives seeking work again after their children's return to school are partly to blame for a rise in the unemployment rate, Government Economist Tang Kwong-yiu said yesterday.
The provisional seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for August-October was 6.2 per cent, up 0.1 percentage points from the July-September period.
Job losses in restaurant and hotel, retail trade, business services and finance sectors more than offset the gains in the construction, wholesale trade, real estate and communications sectors.
The underemployment rate stayed at 3.1 per cent.
The total number of employed people rose by 14,900 in the latest period, in line with the improvement in overall business conditions, Mr Tang said.
On the marginal increase in the jobless rate, he said a relevant factor was the greater participation of women in the labour market.
'After the summer holiday, children have gone back to school, which has allowed housewives to use some of their spare time to look for short-term or part-time jobs, which in turn, raised the participation rate,' Mr Tang said.
