On May 10th 2021 the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the Live Register and PUP figures for April 2021. There were 177,969 people on the Live Register, a decrease of 36,772 on the same month last year. Looking at the Register from a gender and age perspective: women account for 44% of the Live Register and young people account for 11%.
For the first time since October 2016, more than 45% of the Live Register or 81,128 people were on it for more than a year. This is an increase of 12,678 people in comparison to April 2020. Looking at this part of the Register from a gender and age perspective: women account for 40% of the Live Register and young people 9%.
In Table A3 to this release the CSO note that 160,298 people were in receipt of a payment, and 17,671 were not in April 2021: a year ago these figures were 159,831 and 54,910 respectively. The CSO only started to publish this data over the past year as they had noted an increase in the numbers of people signing-on who were not in receipt of a payment during the first couple of months of the COVID-19 crisis. As these figures show, the decrease in the Live Register over the past year is amongst those signing-on who were not in receipt of a payment.
In Table A2 the CSO notes that there were 385,211 people on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) in April 2021, a decrease of 58,036 on March 2021, reflecting the slow but hopefully steady re-opening of Ireland’s economy. For the second month in a row, an annual change in the PUP can be seen, reflecting the fact that what initially had been assumed to be a temporary, short-term payment has been available to people who have lost their jobs due to the State’s response to the worldwide health crisis. In April 2020 there were 605,539 people on a PUP, a time when Ireland was in the first and hardest of the country’s lockdowns.
Looking at these figures from an age perspective, young people aged under 25 years account for 25% of PUP recipients. While from a gender perspective, women account for 48% of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment. A year ago women accounted for 43% of those in receipt of this payment, and young people accounted for 20%.
In Table A1 information is provided on the number of people ‘availing of Activation Programmes’. These figures always lag a month behind, so in March 2021, there were 39,797 participants, 5,472 fewer people than the same month last year. The number of people participating on education and training programmes was 13,584, a decrease of 7% over the year. Over the year the number of people participating on employment programmes decreased by 15% to 26,213. Community Employment remains the biggest programme, with 19,313 participants. Two programmes increased over the year: the Part-time Job Incentive scheme by 51% to 239 participants; and SOLAS Full-time Training for Unemployed People by 1.4% to 5,095 participants.