The cost of living is continuing to rise.

October’s inflation figure was released this morning.

Inflation as measured by Consumer Price Index stands at 10.1% for October 2022, up from 9.8% in September 2022.

The statistics compare October 2022 with October 2021.

Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels continues to be the biggest contributor to the rate of inflation with an increase of 31.6%, within this category gas, saw the biggest increase of (149.7%).

‘Food and non-alcoholic beverages’, has seen the second biggest increase contributing 12.5% to the overall CPI. ‘Oils and fats’, have seen the biggest increase in this category up (34.8%).

The third biggest contributor to the rate of inflation was ‘restaurants and hotels’ contributing 10.5% to the overall CPI.

‘Catering’ has seen the biggest increase in this category (11.2%).

Inflation measured by the Retail Price Index, which uses a different basket of goods, rose by 11.7% year on year.

Meanwhile, unemployment has decreased by 17 people from September, and has fallen by 36 people compared to the same month last year (October 2021).

The unemployment rate, which is the proportion of economically active population registered unemployed, for October is 0.6%, which is a decrease of 0.1% on the previous month. Of the total registered unemployed, 182 are female and just 108 are male.

Approximately 866 job vacancies remained at the Job centre in October, which is a decrease of 44 vacancies compared to the previous month.

Of these, 50% (437) were full-time positions and the other half (429) were part time.