February 16, 2011
By Staff Reporter
The April figures may have been boosted by an early Easter, which meant that temporary holiday layoffs from schools were included, but with big factory closures and redundancies continuing, the jobless numbers appears set to continue to rise.
The last time the unemployment rate reached 4.6 percent was in January 2000. The number of signing on the Live Register increased by an unadjusted 2,881 percent during April, to reach 170,940. In the year to April, the Live Register numbers have increased by 14,703, or 9.4 percent.
Labor Trade and employment spokesman Brendan Howlin called the figures “a clear warning that we are heading once again for live register figures in excess of 200,000 unless the government acts to halt the drift.” He noted that they were the worst April figures since 1999.
“They do not even include major job losses announced in the last few days, including 300 at Celestica and Lucent in Dublin and 250 at Unifi in Donegal.
“In addition, the annual rate of increase has jumped in just one month from 3.6 percent in March to 9.4 percent in April.
“What is of most concern is that the government does not appear to have any strategy for dealing with the job losses and indeed it hardly seems to register at all on the priority list.”