April’s Unemployment Figures

On May 1^st, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) published the Monthly Unemployment (MU) figures for April 2018. There were 140,300 people unemployed, down 16,700 people on April 2017. The unemployment rate was 5.9%, and it is the first time that this rate has been under 6% since May 2008. At that time there were 139,100 people classified as unemployed.

Looking at these figures from an age perspective, there were 107,200 people aged between 25-74 years who were unemployed and their unemployment rate was 5.1%. In May 2008, there were 88,200 people unemployed in this age group, and their unemployment rate was 4.6%. Looking at younger unemployed people, for those aged between 15-24 years, there were 33,100 people unemployed and their unemployment rate was 12% in April 2018. In May 2008, there were 50,900 young people classified as unemployed and their unemployment rate was 11.6%.

On May 3^rd, the CSO published the Live Register for April 2018. According to these figures there were 223,602 people on the Register, a drop of 15% over the year. The CSO divides the country into 8 regions and over the year the Register figures fell across all of them. Looking at the Register from an age perspective young people, aged under 25 years, account for 10.8% of the Register. Looking at it from a gender perspective, women account for 42.6%.  

92,709 people, or 41.5% of the Register, were on it for more than a year, a decline of 17% on April 2017.  Of this figure 53,519 people were on the Register for 3 years and over, this figure has also declined over the year, by 18.6%. The age group with the largest number of people in this position was people aged 60-64 years of age, 12,459 people, with more than half of this group being classified as ‘other registrants’. The next two largest age groups were those aged 45-55 year, with 12,055 people; and those aged 35-44 years with 11,321 people in this position. The majority of these registrants were classified as ‘Jobseekers allowance applications’.

In the annex to the Live Register figures, the CSO publishes data on participation on activation programmes. These figures lag a month behind the Live Register ones and so, in March 2018, there were 59,333 people participating on employment, education and training programmes. This represents a drop of 11.9% over the year. An 11% drop in the numbers of people participating on employment programmes accounts for 58.4% of the overall decrease on activation programmes. Participation on two of these programmes continued to drop dramatically: JobBridge by 100% to 0 participants; and Gateway by 95.3% over the past year to 18 participants. Participation on education and training programmes also fell by 13.4%, to 21,677 learners.

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