On March 4th 2022, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the Live Register and PUP figures for February 2022. There were 163,248 people on the Live Register, a decrease of 23,454 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%.
71,161 people were on it for more than a year, accounting for 44% of the Live Register. This is a decrease of 8,058 people in comparison to February 2021. Looking at this part of the Register from a gender and age perspective: women account for 41% and young people 7%.
In Table A3 to this release the CSO note that 148,000 people were in receipt of a payment, and 15,248 were not in February 2022: a year ago these figures were 165,930 and 20,772 respectively. 76% 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 53,706 people on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) in February 2022, a decrease of 21,704 on January 2022 and an annual decrease of 417,659. Looking at these figures from an age perspective, young people aged under 25 years account for 10% of PUP recipients: a year ago this figure was 24%. Women account for 41% people on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment in February 2022: a year ago this figure was 45%.
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 January 2022 there were 39,283 participants, 775 fewer people than January 2021. The number of people participating on education and training programmes was 11,536, a decrease of 14% over the year. While, over the year the number of people participating on employment programmes increased by 4% to 27,747.
In January’s release the CSO reported that the numbers of people participating on Community Employment in December 2021 was 24,674. However, in this release they have revised this figure down to 19,243. Even with this revision CE remains the largest programme with 19,241 participants in January 2022, a slight decrease over the year. The next biggest programme is TÚS - Community Work Placement Initiative, with 5,445 participants, an increase of 34% over the year. The Work Placement Experience Programme, which commenced in July 2021, had 184 participants in January 2022.