March’s Unemployment Figures

On April 4^th the Central Statistics Office (CSO) published the Monthly Unemployment (MU) figures for March 2018. The MU figures are based on the most recent Labour Force Survey (LFS), Q4 2017 published on March 14^th, 2018 and changes in the subsequent Live Register figures. There were 144,400 people unemployed, down 19,100 people on March 2017. The unemployment rate was 6.1%; this rate for people aged 25-74 years was 5.2%; and for people aged 15-24 years it was 12.5%. Over the year these rates were down 0.9%; 0.8%; and 1.8% respectively.

On April 6^th the CSO published the Live Register for March 2018. According to these figures there were 232,366 people on the Register, a drop of 13% 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 42.9%.  

94,733 people, or 40.8% of the Register, were on it for more than a year, a decline of 16.9% on March 2017.  Of this figure 54,800 people were on the Register for 3 years and over. The age group with the largest number of people in this position was people aged 60-64 years of age, 12,644 people; 10% fewer people than a year earlier. In March 2017 the age group with the greatest number of people on the Register for more than three years were those aged 45-54 years of aged, followed by 35-44 year olds: these figures declined by 17.9% and 20% respectively over the year.  

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 February 2018, there were 59,747 people participating on employment, education and training programmes. This represents a drop of 12.1% over the year. An 11% drop in the numbers of people participating on employment programmes accounts for 57.3% 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 92.1% over the past year to 38 participants. Participation on education and training programmes also fell by 13.9%, to 21,702 learners.

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