BELFAST BRIEFING:Lengthening dole queues and sluggish growth mean chances are rare for NI graduates, writes FRANCESS McDONNELL

NEWRY MIGHT not be the most glamorous place in the world to launch your career but for 50 fresh-faced graduates it is the answer to their prayers this week.

The 50 have been chosen to join First Derivatives’ graduate programme which will give them a taste of how the AIM-listed Newry group operates across the globe.

First Derivatives is one of the North’s fastest-growing companies, with a trail of recent acquisitions and new contract wins from Toronto to Singapore helping to cement its position.

Founded by its chief executive Brian Conlon in a spare bedroom in 1996, the group, which provides financial software and consultancy services, has grown rapidly in the last decade.

Its latest graduate recruitment drive brings the number it employs to 450, and it is not finished yet.

The group is in the process of creating additional jobs within its product development teams in Newry, Belfast and Dublin.

Conlon believes the company’s most important asset is its people.

He is immensely proud of the fact that First Derivatives, while headquartered in Newry, counts many of the world’s top investment banks, brokers and hedge funds among its key clients.

Nick McDaid, one of the young graduates who started work yesterday with First Derivatives, admitted that while he is excited about joining the firm, he is also a little daunted.

But as McDaid well knows, he and the other 49 graduates who got their feet under a desk for the first time in Newry yesterday are among the lucky ones.

While he can look forward potentially to building a career with a company that has truly global horizons, many thousands of graduates in the North can look no further than the dole queues.

Employment prospects may be bad at the moment in Northern Ireland but according to three of the most respected local economists, they are set to get much worse.

Between them, Richard Ramsey, Angela McGowan and Esmond Birnie have this month alone produced some of the most depressing economic sermons since the book of Ecclesiastes.

According to Ramsey, chief economist with Ulster Bank, Northern Ireland remains the worst performing region of the UK in terms of job losses.

He says the contraction of the private sector gathered pace last month with every sector reducing their headcounts.

Ramsey says the number of jobs in the private sector fell in

July for the 29th month in a row and the situation is unlikely to improve because local firms are reporting a sharp drop in new business.

McGowan, chief economist for Northern Bank, is equally downbeat.

She has revised her predicted growth rates for the North in 2010 down to 0.8 per cent.

McGowan has also warned that Northern Ireland, which is particularly “dependent upon the public purse”, is going to have a very challenging time adjusting to a reduction in state support which could reduce confidence and lead to job losses in the short term.

But it is Esmond Birnie, chief economist with PricewaterhouseCoopers in Northern Ireland, who delivers the most sombre lesson this month from his analytical pulpit.

He says business confidence in the North is at an all-time low, consumer spending is weak and there is little hope of replacing the 33,000 jobs lost in Northern Ireland over the last 24 months.

Birnie claims it is “not an exaggeration to suggest the region is facing an economic crisis”.

He illustrates this by outlining the impact the recession has had on the local job market.

According to PwC, in January 2008 the local claimant count was 2.6 per cent – about 23,000, one of the lowest levels in nearly 30 years.

By June of this year, the count had soared by 135 per cent, roughly translating into about 56,100 people claiming jobless-related benefits.

Birnie says unemployment is likely to get worse as the private sector suffers a combination of falling public spending and a lack of private sector investment and confidence.

He, with his economist peers, have suggested that the number of people claiming jobless benefits in the North could rise to a high of more than 60,000 by next year.

It is a grim prospect for new graduates hoping to land a job in Northern Ireland; prayers are one thing but they might be better betting on miracles at this stage.