The number of people signing on to the Live Register of unemployment benefit claimants rose by 2,500 in August to 455,000 on a seasonally adjusted basis, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The rise brought the standardised unemployment rate to 13.8 per cent last month, up from 13.7 per cent in July. It was 13.1 per cent at the start of the year.
In the year to the end of August, there was an unadjusted 6.9 per cent increase in the numbers on the Live Register to 30,198. This compares with an 8 per cent rise to 34,403 in the 12 months to the end of July.
The unadjusted Live Register figure for last month was a rise of 99 people in the month to reach 466,923.
The average net weekly Live Register increase in August was 625, which compares with a weekly increase of 1,700 in July.
The largest percentage increase was in the mid-west region, where those signing on rose 0.6 per cent. The south-west showed the largest percentage decrease, down 0.5 per cent.
There was an overall increase of 700 males and 1,900 females in the seasonally adjusted figures last month.
The statistic show a 1.2 per cent decrease in short-term claimants last month while the number of long-term claimants rose by 2.7 per cent.
According to the figures, there were 144,940 Jobseekers Benefit claimants last month, a monthly decrease of 4,888. Jobseekers Allowance applications rose by 4,413 over the month while other registrants increased by 574.
The CSO said that there were just over 36,000 new claimants on the Live Register in August, a sharp drop from 60,000 the previous month.
A total of 78,282 causal and part-time workers were on the Register last month, equivalent to 16.8 per cent of all those officially recorded as being on it.
In the year to August 2010 the number of Irish nationals on the Live Register increased by 31,025 or 8.7 per cent, while the number of non-Irish nationals decreased by 827, or 1 per cent. There were 388,066 Irish nationals and 78,857 non-Irish nationals on the register at the end of August.
A breakdown of the figures by occupation indicates that the biggest increase last month was in professionals, with a 26.8 per cent rise in the number of people in that category joining the Live Register.
The next largest increases recorded were in the clerical and secretarial and sales categories, up 14.6 per cent and 11.9 per cent respectively.
The Live Register is not designed to measure unemployment as it includes part-time workers, seasonal and casual workers entitled to Jobseekers Benefit or Allowance.
Unemployment is measured by the Quarterly National Household Survey and the latest seasonally adjusted figure, for January to March 2010, is 277,400 persons unemployed, giving an unemployment rate of 12.9 per cent.
