On January 14th 2022, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the Live Register and PUP figures for December 2021. There were 163,856 people on the Live Register, a decrease of 26,004 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 10%.
73,379 people, accounting for 45% of the Live Register, were on it for more than a year. This is a decrease of 2,431 people in comparison to December 2020. Looking at this part of the Register from a gender and age perspective: women account for 40% and young people 7%.
In Table A3 to this release the CSO note that 151,470 people were in receipt of a payment, and 12,386 were not in December 2021: a year ago these figures were 168,372 and 21,488 respectively. 35% 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 early on in the COVID-19 crisis as they noted an increase in the numbers of people signing-on who were not in receipt of a payment. In the twenty-five months contained in this table, December 2022 has the lowest number of people signing-on who were not in a receipt of a payment.
In Table A2 the CSO notes that there were 66,905 people on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) in December 2021, an increase of 11,906 on November 2021, but an annual decrease of 308,357. Looking at these figures from an age perspective, young people aged under 25 years account for 11.8% of PUP recipients: a year ago this figure was 25%. Women account for 41% people on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment in December 2021: a year ago this figure was 48%.
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 November 2021, there were 41,298 participants, 147 more people than the same month last year. The number of people participating on education and training programmes was 12,395, a decrease of 16% over the year. While, over the year the number of people participating on employment programmes increased by 9.5% to 28,903.
Community Employment remains the biggest programme, with 20,458 participants. The next biggest programme is Back to Education Allowance with 5,469 participants. The new Work Placement Experience Programme had 161 participants in November 2021.