"450,000 unemployed" - false and misleading figure?

[RMCF]

OK so I know its a real and accurate figure, but the last couple of weeks I have watched/heard a few radio shows where this figure is repeatedly bandied around.

Ming Flanagan was using it to attack some guy who I can't remember now on the Vincent Brown show last week (he was trying to defend FGs dream of getting 100,000 people back to work).

Ming repeatedly said "if you get 100,000 back to work, what about the other 350,000".

So Ming, and others who use this 450,000 figure all the time think that Ireland is aiming to have not a single person unemployed?

Am I not right in thinking that even when we were the "2nd richest nation on the planet" during the Tiger, we still had around 150,000 not in work?

 

[Protocol]

The number of people unemployed in Ireland is 304,500, as per the CSO's QNHS. See here:

[broken link removed]


The figure you refer to is the Live Register, which is not a true measure of unemployment. See here:

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"The Live Register is not designed to measure unemployment.​

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It includes part-time workers (those who work up to three days a week), seasonal and casual workers entitled to Jobseeker’s Benefit or Allowance. Unemployment is measured by the Quarterly National Household Survey and the latest estimated number of persons unemployed as of the second quarter of 2011 was 304,500."​

 

[Protocol]

Persons on Live Register (Number) by Year
1989 231,556
1990 224,711
1991 253,947
1992 283,142
1993 294,279
1994 282,413
1995 277,767
1996 279,235
1997 254,379
1998 227,096
1999 193,237
2000 155,398
2001 142,253
2002 162,465
2003 172,414
2004 166,013
2005 157,117
2006 157,397