Many times, there is a huge difference between how things are presented and what their real implications are.

A case in point is this week’s Eurostat release about unemployment. Many, even locally, interpreted the figures at absolutely face value – ie that the number of people out of a job in Europe has increased again.

But there was a local angle to it that escaped most. While unemployment has risen in most European countries, Malta is one of the seven countries where unemployment has decreased.

Unemployment in the eurozone hit a record high in September with nearly 150,000 more jobs lost as the debt crisis continued to undermine an economy slumping into recession, official data showed yesterday.

But Malta, with six other countries, saw its unemployment decline from 6.6% in August to 6.4 % in September. Malta also retained its fifth lowest place in the unemployment stakes.

To provide more background: The 17-state eurozone had a jobless rate of 11.6% in September, up from 11.5% in August, with the numbers out of work rising to 18.49 million from 18.34 million, the Eurostat data agency said.

The increase over the past year is well over two million.

The highest unemployment rate was recorded again in Spain, where 25.8% of adults are out of work, followed closely by Greece, with Austria posting the lowest rate of 4.4 % and benchmark Germany and the Netherlands each on 5.4%.

As for Malta, however, the figures were not all that rosy, nor can we delude ourselves we are out of the woods. The figures for seasonally adjusted unemployment rates show that Malta’s youth is not having it so good. Last year’s 13.8 % youth unemployment figure has been increased to 16.2%, with more females than males being out of a job.

Clearly, analysis is called for here, although it is doubtful whether we will get any analysis worth its salt this side of the election.

There must be a reason why unemployment is on the increase across Europe, reaching, as we saw, peaks of 25.8% in Spain, beating even Greece’s 25.1%.

There must be a reason why unemployment is coming down in seven countries. There must be a reason why unemployment has come down in Malta where it now stands at 6.4%, beaten only by ‘virtuous’ countries such as Germany and The Netherlands, Luxembourg and Austria.

Achieving this low unemployment figure is no mean feat for Malta, seeing it has had to combat rising unemployment in its trading partners, especially in countries from where most of our tourists come.

Yet, this is no time for relaxing on our oars. The fact that youth unemployment has shot up from 13.8% to 16.2% in just a year should make us all aware that youth unemployment is the thin edge of the wedge and that this is all the more worrying since our youth, generally speaking, are better educated, better trained and helped better all around.

This paper invites the social partners, and the ETC, to monitor this situation closely and to come up with solutions.

At the same time, this paper urges the powers that be, ETC especially, to investigate the widespread rumours of social assistance fraud and of people registering for work when they already have work.