On September 9th, 2020 the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the Monthly Unemployment (MU) figures for August. As the CSO have been doing since the March release, they provided the figures with and without the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In August, 121,200 people were classified as unemployed, and their Monthly Unemployment Rate (MUR) was 5.2%. This represents an increase of 1,400 people on the same month last year, and a 0.3% increase in the unemployment rate. There were 41,200 people aged 15-24 unemployed, an increase of 5,500 over the year. Their MUR was 17.5%, an increase of 5.1% on August 2019. For people aged 25-74, there were 80,000 people unemployed, a decrease of 4,100 people. Their MUR was 3.8%, a decrease of 0.1% over the year.
The impact of COVID-19
To allow for and capture the impact of COVID-19 on the labour market, the Central Statistics Office produce a lower and an upper bound to the monthly unemployment figures. The ‘upper bound’ assumes that everyone on a COVID-19 payment would be classified as unemployed. In this case the number of people out of work increases to 359,288, and the unemployment rate is 15.4%.
For people aged 15-24 years, the upper bound of people out of work stands at 96,939 and their Monthly Unemployment Rate (MUR) moves from a lower bound of 19.7% to an upper bound of 37.8%. While for the older age group, people aged 25-74 years, the upper bound of people out of work stands at 262,349, and their MUR goes from 4% to 12.6%.