One in 10 'could be on dole in one year'

One in 10 of the Irish workforce could to be on the dole queue by the end of next year as the economic crisis continues to deepen, according to a leading firm of stockbrokers.

The grim picture of growing dole queues from Davy Stockbrokers comes in the wake of data just out from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) which shows that unemployment rose to a 10-year high of 7% at the end of August as the number of people at work in the State showed the first annual decline since 1991.

At the end of August there were 160,600 people collecting dole benefit and the number of unemployed has risen by almost 50% or 53,300 over the last 12 months, according to the CSO’s Quarterly National Household Survey.

While Davy said the unemployment rate “may reach” a shock 10.3% by end-2009, it will more than likely top the 8.5% mark.

Davy are predicting more job losses in the private sector, saying they expect employment to fall 5.4% on average in 2009 compared with its previous estimate of 3.9%.

The largest drop in male employment occurred in the badly-hit construction sector, where the number of males with jobs fell by 27,000 or 10%.

The predication from Davy gets worse however, with some 100,000 set to lose their jobs on building sites before the construction sector bottoms out.

“This sort of decline in employment has not been experienced by any euro area economy since Finland in the early Nineties,” said Davy.

Article courtesy of the Evening Echo newspaper.