On October 8th, 2021, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the Live Register and PUP figures for September 2021. There were 162,898 people on the Live Register, a decrease of 48,594 on the same month last year. Looking at the Register from a gender and age perspective: women account for 45% of the Live Register and young people account for 11%.
78,020 people, accounting for 48% of the Live Register, were on it for more than a year. This is an increase of 1,750 people in comparison to September 2020. Looking at this part of the Register from a gender and age perspective: women account for 40% and young people 8%.
In Table A3 to this release the CSO note that 148,696 people were in receipt of a payment, and 14,202 were not in September 2021: a year ago these figures were 172,419 and 39,073 respectively. 51% of the decrease in the Live Register over the past year is amongst those signing-on who were not in receipt of a payment. The CSO started to publish this data over the past year and a half as they 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.
In Table A2 the CSO notes that there were 101,470 people on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) in September 2021, a decrease of 42,136 on August 2021, and an annual decrease of 115,792. Looking at these figures from an age perspective, young people aged under 25 years account for 10% of PUP recipients, a similar percentage to the Live Register, while a year ago this figure was 22%. Women account for 45% people on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment in September 2021: a year ago this figure was 46%.
In Table A1 information is provided on the number of people ‘availing of Activation Programmes’. These figures always lag a month behind, and so in August 2021, there were 32,177 participants, 3,381 fewer people than the same month last year. The number of people participating on education and training programmes was 5,303, a decrease of 36% over the year. While, over the year the number of people participating on employment programmes decreased by 1.5% to 26,874.
Community Employment remains the biggest programme, with 19,107 participants. Participants on a few programmes increased over the year, two of them are small programmes: the Short-term Enterprise Allowance (+33 to 217) and the Part-time Job Incentive scheme (+129 to 240). While Tús, the Community Work Placement Initiative increased by 623 participants to 4,906. The new Work Placement Experience Programme is now listed and had 27 participants in August 2021.