Bermuda’s official unemployment rate is 4.5 percent, according to the first labour force survey conducted on the Island.

Premier Ewart Brown told a press conference this afternoon that 1,700 people were looking for work during the week in May last year when the survey was done.

More than half of those were men aged between 16 and 24. The jobless rate was six percent for men and three percent for women. Dr. Brown said: “These are anxious times.”

Deputy Premier and Finance Minister Paula Cox said: “The employment data that has been shared today paints a sobering picture of the state of our economy in 2009.

“On the basis of this newly available data, the Ministry of Finance considers that the contraction of GDP in 2009 could reach as high as 2.5 percent.”

* Read the full story in tomorrow’s edition of The Royal Gazette.