More than 900,000 receiving income supports in March, CSO figures show

There were just over 900,000 people – about 40 per cent of the Irish workforce – on some form of income support in March.

Central Statistics Office (CSO) figures show 905,575 people were on the live register or were benefitting from the pandemic unemployment payment (PUP) or the employment wage subsidy scheme (EWSS) in March

This was down from 941,070 in February.

While the PUP and the live register are weekly schemes, the availability of the EWSS data depends on an employee’s pay frequency which could be weekly, fortnightly, every four weeks or monthly.

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“Because of these differing pay frequencies, and the time it takes for employers to lodge payslip data with the Revenue Commissioners before it is made available to the CSO for dissemination purposes, there is a lag on the availability of the EWSS estimates,” the CSO said.

The number of people on the live register or claiming the PUP fell by almost 10 per cent in April amid the lifting of certain Covid-19 restrictions.

This figures put the total for April at 556,273, which was 9.9 per cent down on the previous month. The data shows that in the last week of April, 385,211 people were in receipt of the PUP, down 58,036 from last month and 220,328 from a year ago. The live register total was 181,800 in April, down 3,500 from March.