One in eight people on dole as unemployment hits 12-year high

ONE in eight Irish people are on the dole as latest figures show unemployment at its highest level in 12 years.

According to the Live Register figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) for August, the number of people seeking jobseekers allowance increased from 423,400 in July to 428,800 last month, an increase of 5,400.

Despite the jump, it is the slowest rate of increase in unemployment in over a year, signalling that the economy may be over the worst of the recession.

In the year to August, there was an increase of almost 78% in unemployment. This compares with an increase of nearly 83% in the year to July.

As recently as April, however, the Live Register showed a hike of 95% year-on-year, so the improvement in the period since has been considerable.

Ireland’s unemployment rate stands at 12.4%, up from 9.4% at the start of the year, and the highest it has been in over a decade.

Ireland has the second highest unemployment rate in the eurozone, behind Spain.

Significantly, however, there was virtually no increase in the numbers of under-25s signing on in August, a group which has been particularly hard hit over the past two years.

Commenting on the figures, Fine Gael employment spokesperson Leo Varadkar said Ireland faced a “winter of discontent” unless something was done to reverse the rise in the numbers on the dole.

“The seasonally adjusted live register has risen for the thirty-third month in a row. Unemployment has increased almost threefold in the past two years and has doubled in the last 14 months. Almost 95,000 people under the age of 25 are now unemployed, with some 440,056 people on the live register.”

“The Government will try to represent these figures as evidence of a turnaround. But the reality is that unemployment is still rising. The ship is sinking more slowly, but it’s still sinking,” he said.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore said the figures were “shocking” and that the public finances could not be sorted out without getting people back to work.

“The Government appears to have thrown in the towel on unemployment and seems resigned to figures on the live register going over 500,000.”

“With an extra 286,000 added to the live register since the 2007 election, additional annual cost to the Exchequer is around €5.7 billion, more than the total cuts in expenditure that Colm McCarthy was asked to identify,” he said.

Chief economist with National Irish Bank, Ronnie O’Toole said the increase in the numbers of eastern European workers leaving Ireland was one of the factors that led to the slower rate of increase in unemployment last month.