Jobs growth outpaces eurozone

JOBS growth in Ireland continues to outpace every other country in the eurozone. The latest Bank of Ireland Business Banking Job Index shows job advertisements grew by 7% last month.

Employment growth remains limited in the euro area, where the unemployment rate has been anchored around 9%. In contrast Ireland's rate has fallen from 4.8% a year ago to 4.3%.

Bank of Ireland chief economist Dan McLaughlin pointed out that Irish unemployment, as captured in the live register, peaked a year ago and has fallen steadily since, implying strong employment growth.

"Some 52,000 jobs were created in the year to the end of the first quarter and Business Banking's Job Index points to a continuation of this picture by highlighting strong demand for labour over recent months," he said.

Dr Mclaughlin said the Irish economy grew by over 6% in the first quarter of 2004, led by a rebound in exports and business spending, in turn reflecting buoyant global conditions.

"This trend has been clearly picked up by the Job Index from last autumn. Employment growth has also picked up momentum in the US and the UK but the pace of labour recruitment in Ireland has been substantially higher," he said.

Last month 16,906 recruitment advertisements were placed in the national and daily Sunday newspapers in July, according to the job index.

This represents a 7% increase over July 2003 with the largest monthly increases year-on-year in the professional (+59%) and IT/Tech (+18%) sectors. The healthcare (+8%) and construction (+8%) sectors are also up, while the retail sector showed a gain of 5%. This is a continuation of the positive trend witnessed last month in the IT sector, which saw the highest number of IT recruitment advertisements placed since the Job Index began in March 2002.

This overall upturn is further evidenced by the most recent notified redundancy figures released by the Dept of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, which saw a 24% drop on the July 2003 redundancy figures.

Despite the overall increase however, there has been some monthly decreases year-on-year with one of the key drivers of the economy, the manufacturing sector (-35%), experiencing its first month-on-month decline since June 2003. The financial (-32%) educational (-14%) and leisure (-2%) sectors all fell back following positive gains in June. Bank of Ireland Business Banking director Cathal Muckian said: "The findings of this month's job index reflect the continued resurgence of a number of key business sectors."

While there was some decline on last month, due mainly to seasonal factors, the Job Index reflects the general upturn in the economy since the beginning of the year. This positive trend is facilitating business growth, which in turn is leading to a demand for labour. Bank of Ireland Business Banking is seeing similar growth across all areas of its business particularly in funding retail, food and construction development.