SFA: Over 1,000 jobs lost every week last year
The Government was today urged to boost job creation in 2011 by restoring cost competitiveness to the business sector following the release of figures showing more than 60,000 redundancies last year.
“In excess of 60,000 redundancies were notified to the Department of Enterprise, Trade & Employment and an average of 1,075 jobs were lost in this country every week in 2010,” said Director of the Small Firms Association (SFA), Avine McNally.
The SFA noted that employment continued to fall during the past 12 months, although at a slower pace.
"In the final months of 2010 we saw a stabilisation in the live register, however, the outlook for job creation is weak, and will remain slow until greater growth occurs in the economy," McNally said.
"While Budget 2011 provided some certainty to the economy it did not go far enough and provide the confidence that is desperately needed by consumers and the business community.
"Only when businesses feel more confidence will we start to see businesses invest, grow and create employment.” she added.
The services sector continues to be the hardest hit, with 21,287 and 38% of all jobs lost in 2010.
“The loss of jobs in the services sector is being compounded significantly by the downturn in consumer spending”, commented McNally.
“The manufacturing sector shows the loss of just over 11,607 jobs and given the global pressures and costs associated with doing business in Ireland this sector maintains a worrying trend.”
“What is also concerning about the high levels of redundancies is that our ability to create new jobs has been damaged by losses to competitiveness.
"There is a clear need for the Government to now prioritise the restoration of cost competitiveness to the small business sector, which is the only way to stop further job losses,” McNally added.
She said that while small Irish businesses have taken actions to regain cost-competitiveness within their businesses, many costs remain which are outside their control as they are Government controlled.
“In the absence of reductions in these costs, small businesses will continue to have to further reduce the costs that are within their control, and this will inevitably mean a further loss of jobs.”
McNally added that as the recovery to date has been concentrated in the exporting sectors and the labour intensive domestic sectors lagging behind, job creation in the economy will remain muted.
“The common agenda must be to promote economic growth, to adopt the right policies to ensure that growth comes with jobs, and to increase labour market efficiency to allow a better match between demand and supply. Job creation must be at the heart of the recovery policies,” concluded McNally.
