ARE you familiar with the term “financial distress”?

AVERAGE weekly earnings fell by 1.4% year-on-year during the third quarter of the year — with the public sector taking the biggest hit.

THE latest Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) report, which is for Q3 2008, shows the first fall in employment since 1991, with unemployment moving sharply higher.

The latest detailed labour market data from the CSO show that the employment situation was still quite positive at the beginning of this year, but IBEC cautioned that a lot has changed since the survey was undertaken and the labour market is now much weaker.

The Government was today accused of leaving the economy on auto-pilot after new figures revealed unemployment is at its highest rate for almost a decade.

SSIA holders have indicated that they will spend just under one third of their cash windfalls on consumer items such as foreign holidays and cars.

Action must be taken to curb the rising levels of unemployment among young people, it was warned today.

BORDER towns are the country’s worst unemployment blackspots, with jobless figures topping 20%. Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures showed unemployment affected one-in-five people in Carndonagh, Co Donegal — the highest in the country, while unemployment levels of 19% in Castleblayney and Dundalk were more than double the national average.