Unemployment up by over 13,000 in year, CSO survey shows
More than 1,000 people a month joined the dole queue over the last year.
Official figures showed a total of 309,000 people were unemployed by March – up 13,300 in the previous 12 months.
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) said the long-term unemployed – people who have not held a job in a year – now account for 60% of those out of work.
ISME, the Irish Small & Medium Enterprises Association, raised concerns and described the current unemployment situation as disastrous.
Mark Fielding, chief executive, said: “The continuous increase in unemployment and in particular the long-term unemployed clearly demonstrates that the Government’s job strategy is not working.
“Much more action is required on the jobs crisis to arrest the savage loss of jobs.”
The latest Quarterly National Household Survey found almost 2.1 million people were of work age in the first quarter, down 4,800 over the year.
Of those, 1.786 million were employed – an 18,100 drop over the previous year.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate increased from 14.5% to 14.8% over the quarter.
ISME called on the Government to introduce a jobs initiative to subsidise employment, to address the bank credit crisis, and to reform the social welfare system to make it worthwhile to work and come off the dole.
“While the Government cannot create jobs its responsibility is to foster an environment in which jobs can be created,” said Mr Fielding.
“Now is the time to prime pump the economy with a jobs initiative that subsidises employers for each additional job created.
“That action will encourage confidence and stimulate consumer spend, starting the recovery process.”
Elsewhere, business group IBEC maintained the figures showed job creation is happening in the private sector.
Fergal O’Brien, chief economist, said numbers out of work rose as thousands of public servants took early retirement.
“The overall employment numbers in the first quarter of the year were fairly disappointing and are reflective of early retirements in the public sector and renewed weakness in the European economy,” he said.
“Following the increase in employment in the final quarter of last year we knew that the public sector exits would be a drag on the quarter one numbers.
“Jobs were also lost across a number of other sectors of the economy due to the ongoing contraction of the domestic economy sectors such as construction and the fact that external trading conditions have been tough recently.”
Mr O’Brien said it was positive to see that the private sector has added 13,500 jobs over the past year, while over the same period some 22,000 jobs have been lost in the public sector.
“We continue to see an incredible churn effect in the Irish labour market,” he added.
“While job creation is strong, mainly in export businesses, we are simultaneously losing large number of jobs in the more vulnerable sectors of the economy.
“The job losses are unlikely to be as large in the coming quarters due to the concentrated nature of the public sector retirements in the early part of this year.”
