TALLINN — The number of Estonia’s unemployed is now greater than any other time in history as 102,000, 14.6 percent of the population, are now jobless, Statistics Estonia reported Friday.

The rate of increase has diminished but, so has the number of people who have stopped looking for work. In the third quarter 11,000 people stopped seeking a job because they didn’t expect to find one. In the previous quarter number of discouraged people was 7,000 and in the third quarter of 2008 5,000.

As the unemployment is remarkably higher among men compared to women, those stopping the job seeking process are also mainly men. Nearly 60 percent of the unemployed and two thirds of the discouraged were men.

The number of inactive people — students, retired citizens, homemakers and the discouraged aged 15–74 — was 338,000 in the third quarter of 2009. Similarly as in the same period of the previous year, the number of persons inactive due to studies continued to decrease.