Leadership

Live Register jumps to 413,500

01.07.2009
The numbers on the Live Register jumped by 11,400 during the month of June to stand at 413,500 people, new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) have shown.

In the year to June 2009, there was a massive unadjusted increase of 89.6pc (197,781 people) on the Live Register, the CSO said. This compares with an unadjusted increase of 96.7pc (195,115) in the year to May 2009.

Some 18.7pc of the labour force are now on the register, up significantly from the figure of 7.2pc in 2007.

While the Live Register does not represent a measure of employment – as part-time workers are also included – according to Brian Devine of NCB Stockbrokers, its increase is clearly a signal of the tension in the labour market. It is also an indication of the extra resources needed by the Government to fund the Live Register, he said.

Devine described as “encouraging” the fact that the pace of decline in the Live Register has moderated in each of the past six months from a high of +33,000 in January 2009.

However, he warned that with such a sharp rise in unemployment and taxes, “the recovery in Ireland is going to lag someway behind the global recovery”.

The standardised unemployment rate in June stood at 11.9pc. This compares with a rate of 10.2pc for the first quarter of 2009, according to the latest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate from the Quarterly National Household Survey.

The news of the increase in Live Register figures comes as 120 job losses were announced today at the Waterford operations of US eye health giant Bausch & Lomb, and with fears growing for 170 jobs at the Smurfit Kappa paper-converting plant in Cork.

Speaking in the Dáil this morning, the Taoiseach, Brian Cowen TD, echoed a recent International Monetary Fund (IMF) prediction, saying that he expected the country’s unemployment rate would be around 15.5pc by the end of 2009, and could be even higher in 2010, RTE News has reported.

In its recent bleak annual staff report on Ireland, the IMF predicted that unemployment in the country would climb to 15.5pc next year.