Unemployment rate jumps to 16.5% with more than a third of young people receiving unemployment payments

34% for persons aged 15 to 24 years are now unemployed.

Ireland's unemployment rate has jumped to 16.5% as almost 300,000 are now in receipt of Covid-19 related unemployment payments.

The Central Statistics Office said that when the number of people receiving Pandemic Unemployment Payment at the end of March are taken away, Ireland's unemployment rate is 5.4% up from 4.8% in February 2020.

The CSO said the 283,037 persons in receipt of the Covid-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment at the end of March 2020 do not meet the internationally agreed criteria to be considered as unemployed. Therefore, the CSO has decided to produce a supplementary measure of unemployment in parallel with the routine Monthly Unemployment Estimates.

“The COVID-19 crisis has had a significant impact on the labour market in Ireland in March 2020. While the standard measure of Monthly Unemployment was 5.4% in March 2020, a new COVID-19 adjusted measure of unemployment indicates a rate as high as 16.5% if all claimants of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment were classified as unemployed," Edel Flannery, Senior Statistician, CSO said.

These figures include a 34% unemployment rate for persons aged 15 to 24 years.

The Monthly Unemployment Rate for March 2020 using standard methodology is 5.4%, up from 4.8% in February 2020. In March 2020, the Monthly Unemployment Rate for males and females were 5.5% and 5.4% respectively. Breaking the results down by broad age group, the Monthly Unemployment Rate for those aged 15 to 24 years was 13.2% while it was 4.3% for those aged 25 to 74 years.