On April 8th 2022, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) released the Live Register for March 2022. There were 178,996 people on the Live Register, a decrease of 4,100 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%.
The number of people on the Live Register for less than one year increased by 8% to 110,284 people and of this figure: women account for 47% and young people 11%.
68,712 people were on it for more than a year, accounting for 38% of the Live Register. This is a decrease of 12,438 people in comparison to March 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 164,117 people were in receipt of a payment, and 14,879 were not in March 2022: a year ago these figures were 163,587 and 19,509 respectively. The number of people signing-on who were not in receipt of a payment decreased by 24%, while the numbers of people in receipt of a payment increased slightly.
The only figures published for March in Table A2 (Number of Persons on the Live Register (LR) and in receipt of the PUP or EWSS and Total ) are the Live Register figures. In the notes to this table, the CSO states that the Pandemic Unemployment Payment has closed, and the “final payments were made in respect of the payment week ending Friday 25th March 2022.”
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 February 2022 there were 39,208 participants, 229 fewer people than February 2021. The number of people participating on education and training programmes was 11,394, a decrease of 14% over the year. While, over the year the number of people participating on employment programmes increased by 6% to 27,814.
Community Employment remains the largest programme with 19,230 participants in February 2022, a slight decrease over the year. The next biggest programme is TÚS - Community Work Placement Initiative, with 5,558 participants, an increase of 38% over the year. The Work Placement Experience Programme, which commenced in July 2021, had 195 participants in February 2022.