# Gov.unemployment.figure CONFUSED.



## Bobby (17 Aug 2010)

I recently read that Ireland's unemployment figure is around 14% or 452,000. But we only have a workforce of about 1.3million. So this 14% should be more like 40%. Anyone got more definitive figures?


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## RonanC (17 Aug 2010)

Bobby said:


> I recently read that Ireland's unemployment figure is around 14% or 452,000. But we only have a workforce of about 1.3million. So this 14% should be more like 40%. Anyone got more definitive figures?


 
I would believe this 40% figure also should be the figure used, but how many of the 452,000 are 100% unemployed, how many are claiming back to work assistance, how many are claiming other assistances, ie; working 2 or 3 days and claiming the other couple of days from the social, how many are working and not paying any taxes at all?


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## huskerdu (17 Aug 2010)

I don't have time to analyse the figure in detail, but the following quote from the CSO is relevant.  (The 452,000 figure is the number of people on the live register).

"The Live Register is not designed to measure unemployment. It includes part-time workers (those who work up to three days a week), 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."

 Have a look at cso.ie for more details.


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## thespecialon (17 Aug 2010)

I think we have a workforce of around 1.9 million?


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## Berni (17 Aug 2010)

The labour force is 2.1million people, of which 1.85million are in employment and 275 thousand are unemployed.
As huskerdu says, the live reg includes those who are underemployed as well as those fully unemployed.

[broken link removed]


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## huskerdu (17 Aug 2010)

Another point to add.

While the live register is not an accurate guide to the number of unemployed, as it includes part-time and casual workers, the house-hold survey is a bit flawed too. 

There are loads of people who are lost their jobs but do not show up in the figures.

If you lose your job, and your spouse is working. If you have no chance of another
job and take your children out of childcare, and stay at home  with them. You then dont qualify for JSB, or JSA because you are " not available for work".

I an not arguing about the rules, just pointing our that these people are sometimes lost in the statistics.


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## Joe Q Public (17 Aug 2010)

Indeed. They are. Persons who are sick and on IB, DA etc are not working but are not counted as unemployed.


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## UptheDeise (18 Aug 2010)

Also the 90,000+ on FÁS courses are not included, those who have gone back to full time education and former self employed people are not included either.


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## Protocol (18 Aug 2010)

The Live Register is not a measure of un, even though evry newspaper and news show reports it.

The CSO have all the data at: [broken link removed]

Here is the most recent QNHS publication:

[broken link removed]

As you can see, the data for Jan-Mar 2010 is as follows:

Employment = 1,857,600

Un = 275,000

Labour Force = 2,132,700
 

That means approx 13% unemployment.


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