WITHIN the EU the most reliable unemployment data come from the Labour Force Surveys carried out by national statistics offices along with the European Commission.
Because each country asks the same questions and uses large samples in Ireland over 45,000 private households and 275 institutions the results are consistent between countries and years.
Between April 1993 and April 1995 the Lab our Force Survey recorded a drop of about 40,000, or one sixth in unemployment during that time.
By contrast, the Live Register fell by a fraction of that amount and in the following 12 months increased to 282,000. During this period, however, the numbers at work rose sharply, possibly by as much as 50,000.
As a result of this employment rise the 1996 Labour Force Survey, when it is published in three months, is likely to reveal a further drop, to a figure of 175,000 or less.
This raises two related questions why is there now a divergence of more than 100,000 between the April 1996 Live Register figure and the unemployment figure likely to be recorded by the latest Labour Force Survey? And why during the 12 months up to April 30th were these two figures moving in opposite directions?
On the first question, the Live Register includes workers who may consider themselves employed.
Leaving aside those who may claim payments while at work but may admit their true situation in response to the Labour Force Survey, the Live Register also includes several categories which are legally entitled to inclusion, even though most in those categories are not be seeking work. Examples are
1.The 30,000 part time workers who sign on and receive unemployment payments in respect of days of unemployment.
2.The 17,000 people, mainly women working at home, who are entitled to sign on for credits" rather than for unemployment payments.
3.The 13,800 wives who prefer to split their entitlement with their husbands instead of being treated as adult dependants. (Split claims may entitle a dependent spouse to credited contributions, protecting pension entitlements and giving access to Community Employment Schemes).
4. The unknown number of unemployed people who are on the Live Register but, because they believe they will never work again, have not actively sought work. In so doing, they have excluded themselves from the Labour Force Survey category of unemployment.
As to the recent sharp divergence in the trends of these two sets of figures, this is explained by several administrative rule changes in recent years relating to the Live Register.
These have substantially increased the number of people entitled to payments or to credits towards future possible payments. Here are some examples.
First, the rules governing the eligibility for unemployment payment of young adults living at home were changed in 1991.
This meant that where the parents' means might reduce the entitlement of a child at home to as little as 10p, a sum not worth collecting, it was raised substantially, at first to a minimum sum of £5, then to a £10 minimum, and last year to a minimum of £25.
There is no record of the total number of young people now receiving such payments, but when the minimum amount was raised from £5 to £10 the number seeking it increased by 1,000.
So last year's increase in the minimum payment from £10 to £25 may have added several thousand to the Live Register.
SECOND, in addition to having a right to split payments, a wife can now become the spouse entitled to the full benefit should her husband declare earnings of less than £60 per week.
In some cases this procedure may have been used to increase the chances of a working husband with much higher earnings to evade detection or even help a criminal do so.
Third, a major policy change in 1991 extended social insurance coverage to part time employees, giving them a right to Unemployment Benefit from January 1993, if their hours of work are reduced. Moreover, as from September 1994 the precondition of a loss of hours was abolished in the case of casual workers part time workers whose hours vary and who have no assurance of continued employment.
As a result, such a person, paid up to £76 for three days a week, becomes entitled during such employment, regardless of any other means he or she may have, to £32.30 per week Unemployment Benefit for a period of 21/2 years, and thereafter, subject to any other means, to £31.30 per week Unemployment Assistance.
This is a huge subsidy to employers of casual labour, and offers a considerable disincentive to such a part time worker ever taking on full time work.
It is not surprising that these provisions have added 30,000 people to the Live Register, all of whom are in fact at work, or that in the four years after they were initiated the total number engaged in part time work increased by 40,000.
In this connection it may be noted that in the past 12 months about 3,250 women working at home have entered part time employment.
Subject, of course, to a means test, those who have not received Unemployment Assistance while at home become entitled to it by virtue of starting work they thus swell the Live Register precisely because they have entered employment.
Fifth, an administrative change just introduced, which has further boosted the figures, has been the exclusion of 6,400 students from the Summer Jobs Scheme, now so popular that 25,000 applications for it were received this year.
For 1,300 of these students have as a result become entitled to Unemployment Assistance, which over a period of 10 or more weeks will yield them a bigger sum for doing nothing than they would have received for working had they been allowed to remain in the Summer Scheme.
Many of those thus encouraged on to the Live Register are RTC students.
For whereas a university degree remains a student during the summer periods between each of his/her years of study, an RTC student moving through a similar cycle, securing a certificate after one year, a diploma after the second and a degree after the third, is deemed to have ceased to be a student during each summer holiday.
AN UNFORTUNATE by product of this new rule is that during this summer the very areas where community schemes staffed by students are most needed, for instance, disadvantaged urban areas where there are few university students but many RTC students, are the areas where such manpower is likely to be in short supply.
Enough has been said to show why the Live Register figures should never be used as a means of assessing either the level or trend of unemployment.
And the media should not allow themselves to be misled into presenting them as such.
One reason why there seems to be a reluctance to face this reality is that the Live Register figures are available every month, whereas in Ireland hitherto the Labour Force Survey figures have been available only once a year.
And because of the scale of the work required to analyse 45,000 forms, even the preliminary results of the Labour Force Survey are not published until six months after the period to which they relate.
However, we are about to follow other EU countries in carrying out smaller scale quarterly surveys.
It may be hoped that this will reduce the emphasis given to the dangerously misleading Live Register figures.
And next October there is to be a public debate on these issues, on the basis of a report called for by the National Economic and Social forum.