Increased productivity ‘only way to save jobs’

EMPLOYER body IBEC warned yesterday the only way to beat the rising level of job losses was though higher productivity.

Director of policy Danny McCoy, said it was the only way to counter the 3,500 jobs lost in the year to date.

Mr McCoy said that manufacturing output had improved by 5.2% in 2006, the strongest rate of increase in 2003. That change could mark the long-awaited recovery in industrial performance.

With manufacturing under such pressure internationally and margins continuing to fall, he suggested that jobs in the traded services sector contributed more to the economy on a job per job basis.

Overall the economy will continue to deliver strong growth again in 2007, 5.4%, down slightly on the 5.8% figure for last year. IBEC is also forecasting strong growth next year of 4.8%, well above some of the more pessimistic forecasts as low as 3.5%.

IBEC said the global environment had become a bigger worry, especially the slow-down in the US — reflected in the massive losses in global stock markets in recent weeks.

In the current environment, IBEC said — in its first economic review of 2007 — that “the recent job losses in Ireland are a concern and demonstrate only too cleary the difficulties some companies are experiencing”.

As a high-cost economy then only way to counter that and to sustain employment was by “a significant increase in productivity”.

And IBEC’s chief economist, David Croughan, warned: “The loss of competitiveness must be reversed.”