The number of people claiming unemployment benefits has reached its highest point in almost three years, with the downturn in the housing market and declining competitiveness being blamed for the job losses.
The live register, which measures the number of people claiming jobseekers' benefit and assistance, rose to 163,400 in June, an increase of 3,600 on the month before, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
Over the past three months, the number of people on the live register has climbed by 5,900 - the largest jump in four years. Unemployment is now running at a projected rate of 4.6 per cent, up from 4.4 per cent earlier this year.
Davy Stockbrokers forecast yesterday that further job losses in the construction sector later this year would take the unemployment rate to 5 per cent by the end of the year.
Fine Gael employment spokesman Phil Hogan said the increase in the number of people signing on, combined with the current 5 per cent rate of inflation, suggested the Republic's competitiveness was "taking a hammering". Mr Hogan said the blame lay with the Government for not keeping down the cost of doing business.
"It is getting harder and harder to find a job and the declining popularity of Ireland as a venue for business is the core cause of this."
Labour Party TD Ciarán Lynch described the figures as "a worrying upward trend" and said job loss announcements at Lapple in Carlow, Molex, Motorola and Pfizer in Cork and Eurotel in Athlone pointed to a need for a more pro-active approach.
When not seasonally adjusted, the live register showed an even more dramatic increase last month, with an extra 12,350 people signing on in June compared with May.
But the downturn in the labour market is likely to be mostly confined to the construction sector, the Irish Business and Employers' Confederation (Ibec) said. Ibec senior economist Fergal O'Brien said the 4,200 rise in the number of men claiming unemployment benefits in the past year, compared with a drop of 900 women, suggested that jobs were being lost in sectors such as construction.
Figures from the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment show that redundancies increased 8.3 per cent over the past 12 months.
There were 2,109 job losses received under the redundancy scheme during the month of June. The highest losses occurred in the large services and manufacturing sectors, but there was also more than 250 jobs lost in the building sector. This takes the number of redundancies so far this year to 12,813, an increase of almost 1,000 on the same period last year. Not everyone on the live register is unemployed, as it also includes part-time, seasonal and casual workers.
The CSO is due to publish unemployment figures for the second quarter of the year as part of the Quarterly National Household Survey next month.
The most recent survey showed that there were 96,200 people unemployed.
