Concerns over rise in unemployment

THE latest rise of over 4% in the number of long-term unemployed people signing on the Live Register is very worrying, according to the Irish Organisation for the Unemployed.

Figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) yesterday revealed the number of long-term unemployed signing on the Live Register rose by 4.1% in the six months to October this year.

While the CSO figures also showed a 6.1% drop in the numbers of short-term unemployed signing on in that same period, the Irish Organisation for the Unemployed said it was very concerned about the rise in long-term claimants.

While the Live Register is not the real measure of unemployment because it also includes part-time workers, it does support the trend revealed in the official jobless figures published last week.

The National Household Quarterly Survey revealed more than 99,000 people are unemployed here, a rise of 5% on this time last year.

The figures also show there are 17,500 long-term unemployed people in this country, according to Irish Organisation for the Unemployed general secretary Eric Conroy.

"The most worrying feature of that statistic was that 15,000 of the long-term unemployed were young people and this is something we want the Government to tackle immediately," Mr Conroy said.

The IOU will be increasing the pressure on the Government to honour its commitment in the National Anti-Poverty Strategy to eliminate long-term unemployment completely by 2007.

"Unemployment will break the 100,000 barrier next year and we have to take radical action to stop this, especially the increasing drift into long-term unemployment."

However, the CSO figures released yesterday also showed a decrease of 6.1% in the numbers of short-term claimants on the Live Register in the six months to October.

The decrease of 5,709 in the Live Register in the six months to October 2003 comprised of a decrease of 7,647 (-6.1%) in short-term claimants and an increase of 1,938 (+4.3%) for persons signing on for one year or more.

The CSO figures also showed that this October, 28.4% of all claimants were long-term, which compares to 26.3% in April and 27.3% in October 2002.

There were more men than women signing on long-term on the Liver Register 32.8% men and 22.3% women.

The CSO figures also show over half the short-term claimants were in the 25-44 age group, while those under 20 only made up 5.6% of claimants and the 60-64 age group made up 4.4%.