The drop in June comes as the number of people in active employment rose by about 1,000 to 796,461, the Statistics Office said, but pointed out that a similar trend was witnessed in the March-June period last year.

Last year the unemployment rate dropped from 12.2% in March to 11.4% in June. This means that despite the recent drop the unemployment rate in June was 1.4 percentage points higher on the same month last year.

The number of employed people stood at 701,480, which is 0.2% more than in May, but 2.8% less than in June 2012. Meanwhile, the number of self-employed people dropped by 0.1% over May to 94,981, which is 1.4% more than in June of last year.

A total of 116,603 people were registered as unemployed in June, which is 1.7% less than in May but 10.4% more than in June 2012.

The drop in unemployment in June was more pronounced among men, with the unemployment rate among them dropping from 12.4% to 12.1%. The unemployment rate among women fell 0.1 percentage points to 13.6%.

The unemployment rate among men has dropped by 1.4 percentage points in the past four months, while it has fallen by 0.2 percentage points among women.

The breakdown by age groups shows that the biggest monthly drop in unemployment was registered in the group of 15-24 year-olds, where it fell from 28.3% to 27.7%, and among 55-59 year-olds, where it fell from 23.6% to 22.9%.

The Pomurje region (NE) saw the biggest monthly drop in unemployment, by 0.6 percentage points to 16.7%. It nevertheless remains the region with the highest unemployment rate in the country.