On June 4th 2021 the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the Live Register and PUP figures for May 2021. There were 171,699 people on the Live Register, a decrease of 53,963 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%.
47% of the Live Register or 80,160 people were on it for more than a year. This is an increase of 10,296 people in comparison to May 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 156,666 people were in receipt of a payment, and 15,033 were not in May 2021: a year ago these figures were 163,956 and 61,706 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, most of 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 309,515 people on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) in May 2021, a decrease of 75,702 on April 2021, and an annual decrease of 235,155. In May 2020, 544,670 people were receiving this payment.
Looking at these figures from an age perspective, young people aged under 25 years account for 26% of PUP recipients. While from a gender perspective, women account for 46% of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment. A year ago women accounted for 45.5% of those in receipt of this payment, and young people accounted for 21%.
In Table A1 information is provided on the number of people ‘availing of Activation Programmes’. These figures always lag a month behind, so in April 2021, there were an 39,613 participants, 5,320 fewer people than the same month last year. The number of people participating on education and training programmes was 13,386, a decrease of 8% over the year. Over the year the number of people participating on employment programmes decreased by 14% to 26,227. Community Employment remains the biggest programme, with 19,371 participants. Only one programme increased over the past year and that is the Part-time Job Incentive Scheme. It is a small scheme with only 243 participants, but that represents a growth of 66%.