Bermuda's unemployment rate was approaching nine percent, according to a Government Minister.

Home Affairs Minister Quinton Edness said official figures to the end of August showed that the official unemployment level was 2.45 percent based on the 686 people registered with the Government Employment Office.

"The official figure is 2.45 per cent,'' Mr. Edness said on Friday. "What we normally do is add one percent or so to allow for persons who may be unemployed but haven't registered.

"The maximum amount of unemployment there can possibly be is 3.5 percent.

When I heard that (Mr. Burgess said) it was nearer nine percent, I just knew it was a gross exaggeration.

"But for the Government, even 2.45 percent is too much and we are doing what we can to try and open up jobs and to train and retrain people so that they can fill jobs.'' Mr. Edness said that the present construction boom will have "a fairly dramatic'' impact on official unemployment figures.

"I don't expect it to go back to the days prior to 1992 when we had full employment but I believe the construction industry will bring this figure down.'' Mr. Burgess claimed in his maiden speech as president of the Bermuda Industrial Union that the real unemployment figures was really closer to nine percent as he believed the jobless rate had increased since 1991 when estimates out it at six percent.

He said Dorothy K. Newman's study entitled Bermuda's Stride Toward the Twenty-First Century, placed the unemployment figure around six percent in 1991.

And it was inaccurate for Government to base its figures on the numbers of persons registered at its employment office.

"The Newman study was more accurate in our view, because they actually went door to door when they collected their data,'' he said.