Is it really falling?
3 Mar 2010
Today the Central Statistics Office released the Live Register figures for February, 2010. The Seasonally Adjusted figure is down 2,300 to 432,400 while the unadjusted is up slightly to 436,956. What is striking about these figures when you look at them in detail is that the drop is in Jobseekers Benefit (JB). JB is the payment workers build up an entitlement to through their PRSI contributions and it lasts for either 9 months or a year depending on the levels of contribution made. If an unemployed person has had no joy in securing employment after either 9 months or a year he or she can apply for Jobseekers Allowance (JA). JA is a means tested payment and an unemployed person's family circumstances are taken into account if they either have a partner who is working or are under 25 and living at home.
Amongst the welfare rights queries that come into the INOU are those from an increasing number of men who cannot understand why after working for 10, 20, 30 years they are no longer entitled to an unemployment payment once their JB payment comes to an end. This is a scenario many women are familiar with and it can be argued that unemployment figures tend to undercount the scale of female unemployment. In Budget 2010 access to FAS training allowances was cut off to potential participants who do not have a welfare entitlement in their own right. This development will impact on both women returners and men who no longer receive a Jobseekers payment but who see themselves as unemployed and wish to retrain or up skill themselves and improve their future employment prospects.
Yesterday FAS and the ESRI released a report on occupational employment forecasting. The predictions in this report mirror concerns raised by the INOU, that employment growth will be in the upper end of the labour market. Though the educational profile of the unemployed has changed over the past year, the reality remains that the vast majority do not have the qualifications or skills to access future employment. Though the Government has increased access to higher education courses for unemployed people, the scale of these developments is too insignificant to ensure that those currently unemployed will be able to avail of the opportunities thrown up by the 250,000 job growth predicted by FAS and the ESRI.
A Jobs Strategy is urgently required that spells out how the job growth predicted by both the IDA and FAS and the ESRI will be linked into the education and training courses on offer to unemployed people. At a time of limited resources it is imperative that we ensure that best use is being made of them, otherwise there is a real danger that employment growth will co-exist with significant unemployment.
