Unemployment continues to rise

7 Aug 2009

Today the Central Statistics Office released the Live Register figures for the end of July 2009. The Standardised Unemployment Rate now stands at 12.2%. The last time the SUR was 12.2% was April 1995 but at that stage there were only 277,700 people on the Live Register. At the end of July 2009 there were 423,400 people on the Seasonally Adjusted Register. The INOU is calling on the Government to treat the unemployment crisis as its no. 1 priority and calls for urgent and extensive action to address this issue before long-term unemployment becomes embedded once again.

Yesterday, the Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mary Coughlan, T.D., announced a €250 million scheme to protect up to 27,400 vulnerable jobs in the productive sector of the economy. The Employment Subsidy Scheme (Temporary) will provide a subsidy of €9,100 per employee over fifteen months to qualifying exporting enterprises in the manufacturing and/or internationally traded services sectors. "Though this development is welcome, given the scale of the unemployment crisis facing the country considerably more needs to be done," noted Bríd.

On Wednesday the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment issued the redundancy figures for the end of July. There were 49,009 redundancies by this time: an increase of 142% on the same period last year and 9,009 higher than for the whole of 2008. Three sectors continue to dominate these statistics and they are: other services; building and civil engineering; and other manufacturing. "The INOU is concerned that the Tánaiste's announcement yesterday will have little impact on these figures," continued Bríd.

 

For further information contact:

Bríd O'Brien, INOU Head of Policy and Media: (01) 856 0088 or 086 608 9641