Bermudian men have the highest unemployment rate in Bermuda.Preliminary 2010 Census figures released Friday showed an alarming nine percent of Bermudian men are out of work.The figures also showed the Island’s overall unemployment rate, at six percent, has now matched that of the recession of the early 1990s - and is likely to surpass that number, making the rate the highest in recent times.By comparison, the US unemployment rate has averaged around nine percent in the past year, which is widely viewed as very high.The job losses could be in large part due to the Island’s construction bust.Figures supplied by the BIU showed that in 2000, construction division membership numbered 174 versus 106 in 2010.BIU hotels division membership numbered 1,212 in 2000, compared to 758 by 2010.Meanwhile, Bermuda Government membership increased from 840 to 975 in the ten-year period.Shadow Finance Minister ET (Bob) Richards said the nine percent rate is not surprising given what’s happened in the once-booming construction industry.“The sector has crashed after having grown too large to be sustainable,” he said, noting the construction industry is normally disproproportionately male.“That sector has been one of the hardest hit. You may recall that many men in construction previously worked in tourism, during the heyday. An overall recovery of our economy will bring some relief for these men, but as the construction was very overheated before it crashed, some of these individuals will have to seek employment in other sectors.”The 2010 Census report said there was a seven percent unemployment rate for Bermudian women, a seven percent unemployment for Bermudian/non-Bermudian men combined, and a six percent unemployment rate for Bermudian/non-Bermudian women combined.The unemployment rate for all Bermudians jumped from three percent in 2000 to eight percent in 2010, outpacing the unemployment rate of six percent measured for the entire population.The total number of unemployed in 2011 was 2,581 with a six percent official unemployment rate.However, Government said the data was collected the week of May 13, thus “it’s reasonable to expect that the rates of unemployment in this report have grown higher given the subsequent number of employee layoffs that have occurred”.The report said Bermuda’s labour force reached 39,727 in May, an increase of 1,848 jobs, though that number too could be affected by the large number of lay-offs over the past few months.By comparison, figures obtained from the Department of Statistics showed the official unemployment rate in 1991 (based on the Census of that year) was six percent.The statistic represents 2,102 persons who were eligible and looking for work out of a total labour force that back then numbered 35,222 persons. Most of the job losses were in construction and retail in the 1990/91 recession.By the 2000 Census, the Island’s unemployment rate had fallen to three percent.Breaking the number down, 529 Bermudian men were looking for work in the 2000 Census, representing an unemployment rate of four percent, out of a total of 14,357 Bermudian men in the labour force.