Italy's jobless rate in 2008 rose to 6.7 percent from 6.1 percent in 2007, the first annual rise in nine years, national statistics bureau Istat said on Friday.

Unemployment in the last quarter of 2008 climbed to 7.1 percent from 6.6 percent for the same period in the previous year and was up 0.2 percent from the previous quarter, Istat said in a survey.

The rise in unemployment last year coincided with a 12.3- percent annual increase in the number of people looking for jobs. Statistics showed the rise is mainly in central and southern parts of Italy.

Istat in its report said unemployed men accounted for the most part in the rise due to layoffs while the increase of jobless women was partly due to women's returning to the labor force.

Unemployment last year also climbed for foreign residents, from 8.3 percent in 2007 to 8.5 percent.

The employment growth has been slowed down since the last quarter of 2008, when the growth rate inched up by only 0.1 percent over the same period in the previous year, the lowest gain in 13 years, according to the survey.

Employment rate fell 0.2 percent from the third to the fourth quarter of last year, the second quarterly drop in a row.

Layoffs in the last three months of 2008 resulted in a sharp increase in the number of people claiming unemployment benefits, which more than doubled from 55,000 in the fourth quarter of 2007 to 115,000.

(Xinhua News Agency March 21, 2009)