CSO: 184,800 long-term unemployed
The amount of people out of work for more than a year and classed as long-term unemployed now makes up almost two-thirds of those officially jobless, a report has found.
A study by the Central Statistics Office has put the overall unemployment rate unchanged at 14.8% with 308,500 people out of work.
Highlighting the extent of the damage the economic collapse has done to job prospects in some sectors, it also showed that the long-term unemployment rate is 8.8%, an increase of more than 1%.
People seeking work for more than 12 months straight between April and June this year make up almost 60% of unemployment.
This compares with almost 54% a year earlier and 43% in the second quarter of 2010.
Some 184,800 people are now classed as being long-term unemployed, the CSO said.
The report said the final three months of 2010 was the first occasion since the late 1990s when long-term unemployment accounted for more than half of total unemployment. Since then the figure has stabilised at close to 60% in the last three quarters.
Further breakdown of the jobless figures showed that the unemployment rate for men was 17.8% and the unemployment rate for women was 10.9%.
The CSO said the total number of people in the labour force in the second quarter of this year was 2,096,400 – a fall of 29,500, or 1.4%, over the year.
Over the year to the end of June, the agency’s Quarterly National Household Survey found that the number of people in work fell by 33,400 to 1,787,900.
Brian Ring from the CSO says it compares to a long term unemployed level of 54 per cent last year, and 43 per cent in 2009.
“The long-term unemployment rate was 8.8% in the second quarter of 2012, that’s up 1.1% from a long-term unemployment rate of 7.7% this time last year.
“Specifically, in the second quarter of 2012, three out of five of all unemployed persons was long-term unemployed.”
