Manufacturing:The 1,900 job losses at Dell will add new claimants to the Live Register from April, after 2008 saw large-scale cuts at Abbott, Diageo and others. A weak sterling is now exacerbating problems faced by exporters due to the recession. Some 840 jobs have been lost due to the closure of Waterford Crystal, but if the group is sold, 300 jobs could be saved. Yesterday, 120 jobs were lost after Boston Scientific said it was to close its Letterkenny plant.
Retail
Up to 40,000 jobs will be lost in the first quarter of 2009, according to Retail Excellence Ireland, as retailers unable to cope with lower levels of consumer spending and cross-Border shopping trends hit the wall. Retail sales are falling 8 per cent annually. Meanwhile, clothes chains part-owned by debt-stricken Icelandic group Baugur, which has applied for protection from creditors, could be put up for sale.
Construction
At its peak, the sector employed more than one in eight people in the State, but employment has already fallen by tens of thousands since then, with the collapse of the sector hitting the commuter counties hardest. The number of male layoffs – some 22,900 of the 33,000 people who joined the Live Register in January were men – indicates the extent to which the bursting of the male-dominated construction bubble is to blame.
Financial services
It is feared that the loss of 550 jobs at the Ulster Bank Group’s Republic operations, announced last week by its credit-crunch-hit British parent Royal Bank of Scotland, is just the beginning of the jobs carnage set to hit the sector, although some banks, such as Irish Life Permanent, are offering career breaks instead. The risk of mass layoffs at IFSC operations with global redundancy programmes remains high.
