Unemployment figure drops by 2,000

THE number of people signing on the Live Register fell by more than 2,000 in November the lowest in a year, figures released by the Central Statistics Office confirmed yesterday.

But the National Organisation for the Unemployed gave a cautious welcome to the drop as the Live Register is not the true record of the real number out of work.

The register, which showed that 164,541 people signed on at the end of November, also included more than 21,000 people entitled to work part-time.

The real measure of unemployment numbers will not be revealed until December 10 when the Quarterly National Household Survey is published by the CSO.

"Until then, the jury has to be out on the real state of unemployment, though we give this drop a cautious welcome," INOU general secretary Eric Conroy said.

The November Live Register figures do not include the 500 jobs set to go in Dairygold before the end of the year and the 173 jobs lost in Limerick firm NetG.

"There are conflicting signals coming from official sources while there has been a drop in the Live Register figures over the past four months, there were still a high number of redundancies announced in October and September," said Mr Conroy. The Live Register figures showed there was a drop of 2,011 on the number signing on in October. This compares with an increase of 930 signing on in November 2002.

The seasonally adjusted total shows that 170,400 signed on last month a drop of 2,200. Even though there has been a drop in the numbers signing on the Live Register in the past four months, overall the number signing on so far this year is up on last year.

There was an increase of 5,905 (3.7%) in the number signing on the Live Register up to the end of November. And the standard unemployment rate up to the end of November was 4.3%.

These figures seem to tally with what Finance Minister Charlie McCreevy and the Economic and Social Research Institute were predicting earlier this year.

"Mr McCreevy said he expected the unemployment rate to hit 5% next year and the ESRI are predicting that close to 100,000 people will be out of work," the INOU general secretary said. The last Quarterly National Household Survey showed there were 81,400 people unemployed.

"With the rise in redundancies in the past month it looks like both Mr McCreevy and the ESRI will be right in their predictions," said Mr Conroy.

But Mr Conroy welcomed the improvement in the back-to-work enterprise scheme in the Budget. Last year, Mr McCreevy imposed strict rules on the scheme that only allowed someone who was out of work to join it. But that time limit has been reduced to three years. "While we want the time frame reduced even further, we are glad that our campaign has yielded results," said Mr Conroy.