Bigger Response Required

31 Aug 2011

Today the Central Statistics Office released the Live Register figures for August 2011. There was little change in the overall figures as the Live Register appears to be levelling off at 440 - 450,000 people: a truly frightening reality for a small country with a population of little over 4.5m.
Looking behind the figures a number of statistics jump out: firstly, there is the 29% increase in long-term unemployment with 191,578 people signing-on for more than a year. Secondly, there is the increase in female unemployment which increased by 3.5% overall; male unemployment fell over the year by 1%. However, male long-term unemployment increased by 28% to 138,289 accounting for 72% of those on the register for more than a year. Looking at the age breakdown of the register, there was a 2% increase in the number of people over 25 and a 6% drop in the numbers of people under 25. People over 25 account for 81% of those signing-on.
It is clear from these figures that Government responses to-date are inadequate to address the challenge of unemployment: piecemeal programmes with different rules and criteria leading to increased confusion on the ground will not get people back to work. A different approach is required. The INOU is calling on the Government to facilitate people to take up piece meal and irregular work and to facilitate their immediate return to the register when such work ends. Our organisation believes that this would be a more effective activation measure as it would allow people maintain and develop their own labour market connections.