Latvia's unemployment rate rose to a seven-year high in the final three months of 2009, new figures have revealed.

The Riga-based Central Statistical Bureau of Latvia published its labor-force survey for the fourth quarter of 2009, which revealed that the national jobless rate surged to 19.7 per cent – up from 18.4 per cent in the previous quarter.

This decline in employment has been caused by a substantial fall in Latvia's economic output, which contracted by a preliminary 17.1 per cent in the fourth quarter as retail sales and manufacturing dropped.

Unemployment now affects 229,000 individuals in Latvia, while the official employment rate has decreased to 52.2 per cent of the labor market.

The European Union (EU) member has the highest jobless rate of any country in the region, with Eurostat suggesting last month that unemployment reached 22.9 per cent in Latvia's economy during December.

This is 13.3 per cent more than the average unemployment rate recorded in the 27-member union in the same period, the EU's official statistics office revealed.