70% rise in people out of work in 12 months

THE true extent of Ireland’s unemployment crisis unfolded yesterday as official figures confirmed there was a 69% increase in the number of people out of work last year.

Figures from the Central Statistics Office show that the number of people classified as unemployed jumped by 69,600 to 170,600 during 2008.

The number of people at work fell by 4.1% to just over two million — the biggest annual decrease in employment since official records began in 1975.

The CSO’s quarterly national household survey shows that 86,900 fewer people had jobs at the end of 2008 compared to 12 months earlier.

The overall size of the labour force fell by 17,200 to 2,222,700 — the first annual decline since 1989. The decrease is largely explained by the slowdown in new immigrants to Ireland.

The unemployment rate rose from 4.5% at the start of 2008 to 7.7% by last November.

Fine Gael labour affairs spokesman Damien English said the CSO figures showed the true extent of the unemployment crisis even though there was still no Government strategy to get people back to work.

Dermot O’Leary, chief economist of Goodbody Stockbrokers, said the CSO figures were somewhat dated as Live Register figures had shown the situation had deteriorated even further since the start of 2009.

Austin Hughes, chief economist of KBC (formerly IIB bank), said the latest employment figures posed a difficulty for the Government if it was planning a further increase in taxes.

“Any increased burden of taxation would fall on a shrinking workforce,” he said, adding incentives to work and consumer spending would also be impacted.

The 4.1% decrease in the number of people employed also highlights the deepening economic crisis in the last quarter of 2008 as the annual decrease was just 1.2% the previous quarter.

Some 2,052,000 people were working in the last quarter, representing an employment rate of 65.8% among adults aged 15-64 compared to almost 2.14m a year earlier.

The number of men employed during 2008 fell by 68,800 or 5.7%, while the number of females with jobs decreased by over 18,000 or 2%. Almost 70% of the decline in male employment last year was attributed to the construction industry.

The CSO reported that numbers working in the building sector fell by 16.5% or 45,900 over the past 12 months. Some 18,200 fewer people worked in the wholesale and retail trade, while 11,600 less worked in financial services. The number of non-Irish nationals in the labour force also declined last year by 5,400.

Of the estimated 349,300 foreign workers in the labour force, 33,000 were unemployed at the end of 2008 compared to just 20,000 a year earlier.

The latest data shows the numbers out of work grew at a faster rate in the border, midlands and western region than Dublin and the south.