Number of people in employment set to reach 2m mark

The Department of Finance predicts that the number of people in employment will pass the 2m mark this quarter for the first time since 2008.

A 15th quarterly drop in a row in the numbers of people unemployed means that, in the space of just two years, the percentage of the labour force out of work has fallen from 12.1% to 8.3%.

According to the latest figures from the CSO, there were 1,976,500 people in employment as of the first quarter of this year. That is an increase of just under 47,000 or 2.4% over the course of the last year.