A further 600 people came off the live register in May, bringing the number in receipt of benefits down to 173,200 on a seasonally-adjusted basis.
The latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) broadly reflect the low unemployment rate detailed in separate CSO data, published last week, which put headline unemployment in the Republic at just 4 per cent.
While the live register is not an accurate measure of unemployment as people with part-time work can be entitled to benefits, it does track trends in the labour market.
The latest numbers show the unadjusted live register total stood at 168,406 people for May, a decrease of 8,210 (-4.6 per cent) from May 2023. Of the total, 54.9 per cent were male and 69.5 per cent were Irish nationals, the CSO said.
The 35-44 age group made up the largest number of those on the register at 39,501 people or 23.5 per cent of the total.
There was an increase in the number of people on the live register in three counties in the 12 months to May 2024 - Meath (+5 per cent), Laois (+3 per cent) and Kildare (+1.1 per cent).
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There were 19,114 people benefitting from the EU’s Temporary Protection Directive included in the live register figures for May, a decrease of 1,150 people (-5.7 per cent) from the previous month.
Separate CSO figures, published on Monday, showed that manufacturing output fell by 17.5 per cent in the three months between February and April when compared with the previous three-month period.
The decrease was in the main driven by the modern sector, which includes the State’s large pharma and medical devices sector, which saw production decline by 16.6 per cent compared with the same three-month period in 2023. In contrast, annual production in the traditional sector grew by 13.1 per cent during the same period.
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