Unemployment stays up at 5.5%

2 May 2008

After two very dramatic months where the seasonally adjusted Live Register figures jumped by 8,000 (February) and 12,000 (March) respectively, the two biggest monthly increases on record, today's decline of 200 appears very tame. However, the CSO itself notes that the "wide variation in the monthly changes over the past two months refers to the timing of Easter (i.e. at the end of March)".

"It is interesting", noted Bríd O'Brien, Senior Policy Officer with the INOU, "that at a time when unemployment is rising there is no sense that the Government are planning any new strategies to address this issue". There is a impression given that strategies around life long learning and upskilling people will address these issues but is there sufficient focus to their development and delivery?, and more importantly are they reaching employees in vulnerable industries and jobs or creating new opportunities for unemployed people? The INOU's own sense is that they are not.

Redundancies are running at a higher rate than 2007 and these figures are effectively the tip of the iceberg when it comes to job losses. The contraction in the labour market is wider than the construction industry and the latest ESRI / IIB Consumer Sentiment Index highlighted that, "One out of every three consumers expected their household finances to disimprove over the next 12 months. Consumers responses to the survey questions show that April was the worst assessment of the overall economic outlook in the history of the index."

The seasonally adjusted figure for April 2008 is 199,700, which is 41,300 up on the same month last year. While the Standardised Unemployment Rate remained at 5.5%, this represents a 0.9% over the same time last year.