SFA: Live register figures mask job erosion

The Director of the Small Firms Association, Pat Delaney has warned that the redundancy and live register figures released today are masking a continual erosion of jobs in the exposed sectors of the economy.

Up to 453 people have lost their job every week since the beginning of 2004.

While year on year redundancy figures are declining the overall outcome for 2004 is likely to be in the region of 23,000 redundancies.

Mr Delaney said: “The redundancy figures of 18,137 jobs notified to the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment, for the first three quarters of 2004 are proof positive that companies are continuing to engage in cost-cutting measures in an effort to regain competitiveness.

"A spiralling cost base in areas such as labour, insurance, energy, oil, commercial rates, rents and service charges have all played their part in putting increased pressure on business survival.

"Employment in manufacturing and other production industries which are most exposed to international competition has fallen from 330,000 in 2001 to 300,000. There may still be a lagged response if companies in these sectors of the economy continue to see costs spiral."

"We are losing an average of 453 jobs every week in 2004. Unless investment and business confidence can be restored, we expect to see further job losses for the remainder 2004.

"These redundancy figures undermine the positive prospects for employment creation which are shown in the live register figures.

"This improvement in employment prospects means that small businesses will create 36,238 new jobs in 2004 as demand for labour increases by 5.6%. This is a remarkable turnaround from 2003 when employment prospects dropped to a ten-year low at just 2.7%.

"This reverses a five-year trend of falling labour demand and demonstrates that small business will respond to more positive market conditions.

"The challenge now is to get employment growth, while at the same time retain existing jobs in the exposed sectors."