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September Monthly Unemployment Figures

29 September 2020 - 15:42 pm


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On September 29th, 2020, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the Monthly Unemployment (MU) figures for September. 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 September, 126,200 people were classified as unemployed, and their Monthly Unemployment Rate (MUR) was 5.4%. This represents an increase of 9,200 people on the same month last year, and a 0.6% increase in the unemployment rate. There were 46,000 people aged 15-24 unemployed, an increase of 12,000 over the year. Their MUR was 18.9%, an increase of 7.2% on September 2019. For people aged 25-74, there were 80,200 people unemployed, a decrease of 2,800 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 342,769, and the unemployment rate is 14.7%.  

For people aged 15-24 years, the upper bound of people out of work stands at 92,283 and their Monthly Unemployment Rate (MUR) moves from a lower bound of 18.5% to an upper bound of 36.5%.  While for the older age group, people aged 25-74 years, the upper bound of people out of work stands at 250,486, and their MUR goes from 3.8% to 12%.