Polish Jobless Rate Inches Up To 11 Percent

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — Poland's unemployment rate inched up to 11 percent in October due largely to layoffs and the end of seasonal summer jobs in farming and forestry, the Labor Ministry said Thursday.

The jobless rate rose from 10.9 percent in September, according to the preliminary figures. Some 1.74 million people were registered as unemployed at the end of October.

The Central Statistical Office will release official jobless figures later this month, but those numbers are unlikely to differ from the ministry's data by more than one-tenth of a percentage point.

Poland's jobless rate peaked at 20.7 percent in February 2003, as a result of its shift from a communist to market economy.

Unemployment dropped sharply after Poland joined the EU in 2004, to as low as 8.8 percent last October before the global economic crisis hit.