Jobless rate increases to 6.3% in September

UNEMPLOYMENT ROSE to an estimated rate of 6.3 per cent last month, up from 6.1 per cent in August, as the traditional "back-to-school" plunge in the number of people claiming unemployment benefits failed to materialise to the same extent as usual.

The jobless rate has now increased to its highest percentage since November 1998, with the number of people claiming unemployment benefits now almost 80,000 higher than it was this time last year, according to data published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) yesterday.

This was because the numbers of people claiming jobseekers' benefits fell by just 7,000 in September, a month in which the number of claimants usually falls sharply as schools re-open. This compares with a drop of 13,500 in September 2007.

When the number of people on the Live Register is seasonally adjusted for the normal monthly trends, there was an increase of 9,400 in the number of claimants, the CSO said. In the year to September, some 79,565 people joined the Live Register, taking the total number of claimants to 240,217, up 49.5 per cent.

Alan McQuaid, economist at stockbrokers Bloxham, predicted that the jobless rate would push up close to 8 per cent during the course of 2009, with the numbers on the Live Register breaking through the 300,000 level.

"That said, the situation is likely to have been a lot worse had the Government not moved yesterday to safeguard the Irish banking system with their guarantee scheme," Mr McQuaid said.

However, the Opposition attacked the Government for what they said was a lack of initiative in handling the deteriorating jobs market, contrasting it with its intervention in the banking sector.

Labour Party employment spokesman Willie Penrose said urgent action was needed to reverse the trend in job losses to prevent unemployment becoming "as serious a social and economic problem as it was in the 1980s".

Fine Gael employment spokes- man Leo Varadkar described the figures as "the human face of recession".

Separate figures published yesterday by the Department of Employment show 4,003 people were made redundant under the statutory redundancy scheme last month. This takes the number of redundancies for the first nine months of the year to 27,506, up 43 per cent on the same period in 2007.

The manufacturing, construction and services sectors were all badly hit. The trends are also likely to prove further bad news for the Government's widening exchequer deficit. Data for the public finances for September is due to be published later today.

Meanwhile, more jobs were lost yesterday as it was announced that the Odlums milling and packaging plant in Sallins, Co Kildare, is to close with the loss of 26 jobs, while TV3 said it was to seek 15 redundancies as part of a cost-cutting programme.