February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
PwC warned this week today that the loss of 12,000 jobs in the last 20 months had hit the North’s manufacturing sector hard.
Manufacturing jobs have dipped below 100,000, the lowest since records began, and as the North does not have a private business services sector to compare with most UK regions, further redundancies would have a serious impact.
Growth rates in traditional industries such as agriculture, manufacturing and construction were worrying low across the UK and Northern Ireland.
An added factor in Northern Ireland was fears over political stability since the suspension of the Stormont parliament in October this year.
“Manufacturing redundancies have averaged more than 300 a month since 2000 and recent redundancies in technology companies are over six times the pre-2000 level, eroding many of the recent gains in this sector,” Philip McDonagh, PwC’s chief economist, said. “After suffering 8,000 redundancies in the past seven years, redundancy rates in textiles and clothing have dropped dramatically from their peak in 2000.
“Unfortunately, electronics is now the worst performing sector in terms of job losses and the official figures may understate the extent of the problem as they do not reflect the impact on sub-contractors and self-employed workers.”