GUERNSEY appears to have escaped going into a recession last year.

But the prospects for 2009 are less certain – Guernsey’s economy normally lags several months behind the UK’s and unemployment continues to rise.

Among the signs of resilience were record levels of employment being reached in 2008, although the fall in the workforce in the last quarter when the credit crunch started to bite was higher than in the same period of 2007.

Treasury and Resources will today release its quarterly bulletin, which is expected to confirm the indications that the economy did not enter recession.

Unemployment hit 447 in March, a monthly increase of seven and up from 267 at this time last year.

Commerce and Employment minister Carla McNulty Bauer (pictured) took a positive message from the quarterly labour bulletin, which revealed the workforce was 0.9%, or 297 people, larger at the end of December than the previous year.

‘The final quarter of the Guernsey Labour Market Bulletin for 2008 shows a slight drop in the number of employees but this is fairly typical in the run-up to the Christmas period in any given year,’ she said.