The Government has “no credibility left” on the economy, it was claimed today, as the latest unemployment data showed jobless numbers continuing to rise.
Seasonally-adjusted figures, released today from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), show the unemployment rate rose to 12.4 per cent in the third quarter, up from 11.6 per cent in the second quarter.
The rise, however, represented the smallest quarter-on-quarter increase since the first quarter of 2008.
However, commentators warned against reading too much into signs of a stabilisation in the unemployment rate, with Davy’s Rossa White pointing out that a decline in the labour force rather than an improvement in the employment trend, was the primary factor behind the slowing down in the rate of increase.
In terms of annual trends, the CSO’s Quarterly National Household Survey continued to paint a grim picture of Ireland’s employment rates.
There were 120,400 more people unemployed in the third quarter of this year compared to the same period last year – an increase of 75.5 per cent.
A total of 279,800 people were unemployed in the third quarter of this year, with unemployed males accounting for 68.6 per cent of the total unemployed and females representing 31.4 per cent. This means that the level of male unemployment increased by 86.8 percent on the year, while female unemployment saw a 55.3 per cent increase.
The main reason for the greater increase in male unemployment was the large decline in employment in the construction sector.
Fine Gael’s enterprise spokesman Leo Varadkar said the Government has no credibility on the economy.
“No amount of George Bush-style declarations of victory can disguise the fact that Ireland is still mired deep in recession,” he said.
Fine Gael claimed the Government missed the opportunity in Budget 2010 to introduce wide scale pro-employment policies to get willing people back into work.
But chief economist at Bank of Ireland Dan McLaughlin said: "It's positive from a fiscal perspective".
"The government was anticipating a much higher unemployment figure and therefore the benefit payments they'll have to pay out is coming in lower than projected," he said.
The construction sector saw the largest decline in employment during the quarter, with 80,000 less people employed in the construction industry than in the same period in 2008- a fall of 34.8 percent.
However, this drop was less severe than recorded in the previous quarters, suggesting that the pace of decline in the numbers employed in the construction industry is slowing.
The figures show that, in total, there were 1,922,400 people in employment in the third quarter of this year, an annual decrease of 184,700 or 8.8 per cent.
This is a steeper annual drop than the annual decrease recorded in the second quarter of this year, which saw an 8.2 per cent year-on-year drop in the number of employed.
ISME, the Irish Small & Medium Enterprises Association, claimed small businesses and their employees had been abandoned by an “out of touch” Government.
“With Nama and the Budget now out of the way the Government needs to focus on saving the wider economy by making a concerted effort to address the collapsing labour market, instead of announcing over hyped initiatives that, in their current guise, have an extremely limited success rate,” Isme chief executive Mark Fielding said.
Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed (INOU) said the economy desperately needs a coherent and inclusive jobs strategy if long-term unemployment is not to continue to climb and to become entrenched once again in Irish society.