Unemployment continues to rise

Redundancy figures released today for the first two months of the year show an 12.9% increase on 2003.

There were 4,438 redundancies in first two months of 2004 and the Small Firms Association has claimed that 500 jobs have been lost every week for the past 112 weeks.

Director of the SFA Pat Delaney said today: "Since January 2002 this trend has continued and shows no signs of abatement.

"Employment prospects are in a severe crisis. Small companies continue to engage in cost-cutting measures in an effort to survive the impact of a spiralling cost base in areas such as labour, insurance, energy, commercial rates, rents and service charges.

"The expected upturn in the international economy may take some time to benefit the small business sector," he added.

The Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment released the figures earlier today.