Unemployment and Living standards

The unemployment rate has never exceeded the 3.6% of the economically active population during the last 15 years.

Unemployment rate

Registered Unemployed (thousand)		8.3	5.1	7.9	9.4	10.4	10.4	11.4	10.9	9.5
Unemployment rate (%)		3.3	1.8	2.6	3.1	3.4	3.4	3.6	3.4	3.0
	Males (%)	2.9	1.4	1.9	2.3	2.7	2.9	3.1	2.9	2.4
	Females (%)	4.2	2.5	3.7	4.3	4.5	4.2	4.7	4.7	3.9

The Gross Domestic Product in Cyprus was 4,825.9 million Cyprus pounds, while the gross national product per capita was 8,157 Cyprus pounds (2000 data).

Geographically, Cyprus is part of Asia. But its people live much like southern Europeans and have a relatively high standard of living. The quality of life is improved rapidly as it is shown in the increase of the GNP per capita presented in the table:

Gross national product per capita

	1985	1990	1995	1996	1997	1998	1999	2000
Per capita G.N.P. (C£)	2.787	4.483	6.286	6.418	6.678	7.071	n.a.	8.157

Moreover the percentage of households in own houses is increasing rapidly during the last decade:

Households in own houses

	1976	1982	1992	1996/97
% of households in own houses	57,4	60,0	63,8	74,3
Average number of persons per room	1,44	0,78	0,64	0,62

The improvement of the quality of life can be shown in the table where, the access in modern facilities is presented.

Households equipment

% of households with:	1971	1985	1991	1997
refrigerator	78	96	99	99
washing machine	28	67	84	91
dish washer	n.a.	n.a.	10	29
television set	49	90	95	97
video recorder	n.a.	12	67	67
personal computer	n.a.	n.a.	4	13
telephone	n.a.	33	88	96
mobile telephone	n.a.	n.a.	n.a.	20
car	33	62	76	82