When employers laid off 14,600 employees, but the number of new jobs also started to rise, by 3,000 to 27,300, in September compared to August, figures from the State Employment Service (AFSZ) show. The number of workers to be laid off is not expected to be this high for the remainder of 2009 in yr/yr terms, the AFSZ document said. This is partly because the volume of the monthly announcements has fallen visibly, and partly because lay-off announcements rose considerably as early as November-December 2008 due to the crisis, both in terms of their number and the number of employees affected. In January-September 2009, more than 500 employers decided to lay off groups of workers, including the dismissal of 2,142 people at 39 companies in September. Following the rise registered in July, the number of workers affected by mass lay-offs fell by 1,200 in August from the previous month, and this continued in September. Compared to the same month of 2008, however, the increase was still 669. With regard to sectors, 41.1pc of the headcount affected by mass lay-offs was dismissed from the manufacturing sector in September, with 18.8pc coming from the transport, warehousing, postal services and telecommunications sector and 11.5pc from the real-estate and business-services sector. AFSZ figures show the number of new jobs rose 12.5pc in September compared to August. Compared to the same period of 2008, however, the number of new jobs is still 32.4pc lower. Employers intended to fill more than half of the new jobs in some form of subsidised employment. The number of registered job-seekers was 566,300 at the end of September, up 0.4pc from the previous month. The number of job-seekers has been rising since July, primarily due to the increase in the number of graduates. The percentage of the registered job-seekers compared to the active population is 12.9pc, while their ratio compared to the population of employable age was 8.4pc at the end of September.