RUSSIAN JOBLESS RISING.

The State Statistics Committee (Goskomstat) reports that at the end of February there were 6.9 million unemployed in Russia, which amounts to 9.5 percent of the country’s 72.5 million working population. Of that total only 2.6 million, or 3.5 percent of the working population, were officially registered with the employment service. Over the first two months of this year the number of unemployed grew by 7 percent over the same period in 1996. (Itar-Tass, March 31)

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