2008 redundancies 30% ahead of last year, figures reveal

REDUNDANCIES IN 2008 are running 30 per cent ahead of last year, with 5,644 official redundancies in the first two months, according to new figures released by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment on a gloomy day for the jobs market.

There was an 80 per cent surge in redundancies in February compared to the same month last year, with 2,875 job losses registered under the State redundancy scheme during the month.

The employment outlook darkened yesterday, as the one positive piece of news - the creation of 165 jobs at drugs firm Teva in Waterford - was overshadowed by the loss of 130 jobs at printing company Microprint in Tallaght, Co Dublin, and a new report showing that employment in the Republic's factories fell last month.

Microprint managing director Alan Heatley blamed an increasingly competitive environment and rising cost pressures for the closure. "Following serious financial losses since late 2006 . . . it is very clear that the company, which is losing a significant amount of money on a weekly basis, could not sustain a further period of heavy losses," he said.

Manufacturers across the State endured further sharp increases in input costs in February, with activity in the sector contracting for the third month in a row, according to the NCB purchasing managers' index (PMI).

The PMI report showed that efficiency gains and weak growth in new orders led to lower staffing levels in factories, although the pace of the decline in employment has slowed after a record plummet in January.

Redundancies have been concentrated in construction, manufacturing and services, the department's figures confirm. So far in 2008, there have been 1,414 redundancies in the building and civil engineering sector with 1,799 redundancies in metal manufacturing, engineering and other manufacturing categories. Two-thirds those made redundant were male.

The spate of high-profile job losses during February included 580 redundancies at Arnotts, 360 job losses at Allergan, 200 at Jacob Fruitfield, 130 at Grove Turkeys and 120 at SerCom Solutions.

There are also growing concerns that the pipeline of new jobs from foreign direct investment (FDI) will fall. The number of jobs created by FDI in 2007 was 40 per cent lower than the previous year, a report by monitoring agency OCO Global said yesterday.

Meanwhile, a higher proportion of employers now expect staff numbers to fall rather than rise in 2008, a separate survey published yesterday by Fás and the Economic and Social Research Institute confirmed. The net employment expectations indicator in January was -11 per cent, meaning that the percentage of firms expecting a fall in staff levels is 11 points higher than those predicting an increase.

Some 14 per cent of private-sector firms reported that they had vacancies, down 6 percentage points year-on-year. Just 10 per cent of construction firms say they have vacancies, compared to 19 per cent this time last year.