ROME, Dec. 20(Xinhuanet)-- Italian unemployment was kept at 7.7 percent in the third quarter of 2005, unchanged from the previous quarter, national statistics office Istat said on Tuesday.

The number of people looking for work fell by 14,000 from the second quarter to 1.874 million, probably as a result of women in the south of the country abandoning the search for a job, Istat said in an official data corrected for seasonal variations.

The proportion of women aged between 15 and 64 who were active in the labor market in the south fell by 1.5 percentage points to 36.3 percent during the quarter, the office said. Enditem