Unemployment down but long-term unemployment persists

22 Feb 2007

Today the CSO released the Quarterly National Household Survey for the 4th quarter 2006.

The INOU is delighted to see that unemployment has fallen by 4,800 between the 3rd and 4th quarters of 06; and had declined by 2,600 between quarter 4 of 2005 and 2006. What is interesting is that most of this decline is amongst women. Yet construction jobs, which are predominantly male, had the strongest employment growth rate (28,400). The next highest sector was health with 18,700 and the vast majority of this employment is female.

The unemployment rate is now down to 4.2%.

Despite the good news the INOU is concerned that long-term unemployment remains at 1.3% and that the vast majority of the year-on-year change was amongst the short-term unemployed.

As Bríd O’Brien, senior policy officer with the INOU noted “The NAPS had set a target date of 2007 to eliminate long-term unemployment and as we can see from today’s figures that is unlikely to be met. It’s particularly worrying then that in the recently launched National Action Plan for Social Inclusion no such target exists.”

ENDS

For further information contact:
Bríd O’Brien, INOU Senior Policy Officer: 01 8560088