Over 140,000 are long-term jobless
The doubling of those out of work for 12 months or more in the year to the end of September was revealed in the Central Statistics Office (CSO) Quarterly National Household Survey published yesterday.
The number in long-term unemployment now stands at 6.5% of the total workforce compared with 3.2%, or 69,000, at the same time last year.
The government’s failure to instigate effective plans to counter the massive increase drew angry criticism.
“Putting this figure into perspective, the National Recovery Plan only talks about a cumulative increase of 90,000 jobs over the four-year period. This doesn’t even amount to a prospect of a job for those currently long-term unemployed, let alone anyone else who will be looking for work,” said Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU) spokes-woman Bríd O’Brien.
A total of 1,851,500 people were in employment during the months July to September 2010, an annual decrease of 70,900.The total number of people unemployed in the third quarter was 299,000, up 19,200 or almost 7% from a year earlier. The unemployment rate rose from 13.2% in the second quarter to 13.6%, The CSO said this was the lowest annual rise in unemployment since the first quarter of 2008.
Full-time employment fell by 73,500 on an annual basis, with the construction sector continuing to record the largest declines, with the numbers employed falling by 36,800. Since its peak in the second quarter of 2007 the total numbers employed in this sector have fallen by nearly 58%.
There was an increase of 2,600 in the numbers employed part-time in the year to the end of September with male part-time employment increasing by 1,100 over the year and female part-time employment rising by 1,500.
Overall employment in the public sector fell by 10,000 or 2.4% over the year compared with a decline of 6,400 or 1.5% in the 12 months ending September 2009.
ICTU economic adviser Paul Sweeney said, without a major change in government strategy, the outlook for the unemployed is bleak. “The trend in long-term unemployment is continuing and I believe it will accelerate when the budget fully impacts. You can’t take the amount of money they intend out of the economy without creating huge unemployment, or their hidden agenda mass emigration. . . They hope everyone will go away and not cause trouble.”
The CSO’s Padraig Dalton said the figures did not provide an accurate figure on emigration and this would have to wait until next year’s census.
However, an NCB stockbrokers analysis of the figures put likely emigration over the last 12 months at 62,500. Explaining a slight decrease in the Live Register rate earlier this month which was reversed in the quarterly household survey, an NCB spokesman added: “The unemployment rate for non-Irish nationals fell from 18.1% in the third quarter of 2009 to 17.2% in the third quarter of 2010. This was offset by an increase in the unemployment rate for Irish nationals to 13.3% from 11.9%. Therefore, there would have needed to be an acceleration in the numbers of Irish nationals on the Live Register emigrating to be the main driver of the fall in the unemployment rate.”
