Caught in the unemployment trap

It is welcome the unemployment rate is dropping, but statistics can be deceiving.

Our unemployment figures exclude many who are not in the labour force — people on CE & Tús schemes, those on disability payments and owners of failed small businesses.

There are hundreds of thousands of people unemployed. The effects of unemployment are devastating. The most obvious and immediate effect is poverty — if the food pyramid is the guide for healthy eating, then social welfare rates are insufficient. Poverty undermines health and wellbeing. It has been recently reported by Sean Healy that 750,000 people live in poverty — this in a country that not only tolerates, but exalts tax exiles.