Warning on latest redundancy figures

This week, three separate reports on jobs and competitiveness have been negative.

On Tuesday, the CSO reported a loss of 10,600 industrial jobs since January. On the same day, the CSO confirmed that wage increases were running at 9%, or three times higher than our eurozone competitors. Figures released by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment show that redundancies are running at record levels throughout the economy. In the first nine months of 2003 the level of redundancies is already 4.6% ahead of 2002.

“We are losing a job every 20 minutes and an average of 503 every week in 2003,” Mr Delaney said. “The increase in September over the previous year was a dramatic 61.5% and there is no sign of this trend abating.” Every 15,000 extra people unemployed costs the exchequer €100 million in Social Welfare payments” he said.