Numbers signing on Live Register down 1.3% in October

There were 332,200 on the register last month as against 336,600 for September

The number of people aged under 25 years continued to decline, falling by 19.7 per cent or 10,084 in the year to October. Annual decreases have occurred in all months since July 2012

The number of claimants signing on the Live Register fell by 4,400 last month, a decline of 1.3 per cent versus September, according to new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

There were 332,200 on the register at the end of October as against 336,600 for the previous month.

In unadjusted terms there were 320,794 people signing on, down 10.6 per cent on October 2014.

The number of male claimants was down by 3,500 or 1.8 per cent versus September and by 28,105 or 12.9 per cent on an annual basis, leaving a total of 189,667 men signing on at the end of October.

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The number of female claimants fell by 900 or 0.7 per cent on a monthly basis and by 9,731 or 6.9 per cent compared to October 2014.

According to the latest figures, the number of long-term claimants on the Live Register totalled 149,603 last month, down 12.5 per cent on an annual basis.

There were 65,184 casual and part-time workers on the register, equivalent to 20.3 per cent of the total numbers signing on in October and up from 19.9 per cent a year earlier.

The number of people aged under 25 years continued to decline, falling by 19.7 per cent or 10,084 in the year to October. Annual decreases have occurred in all months since July 2012.

Overall, there were 31,245 new registrants on the Live Register last month with an average of 3,345 male and 2,904 female claimants joining each week of the month.

CSO began publishing a new series of monthly unemployment estimates in June. the latest figures, published earlier this week, put the State’s jobless rate at 9.3 per cent for October with youth unemployment falling to 19.7 per cent.

The estimates replace the Standardised Unemployment Rate (SUR) as the definitive measure of monthly unemployment, which used to be published alongside the Live Register numbers.

Charlie Taylor

Charlie Taylor

Charlie Taylor is a former Irish Times business journalist