Analysis:A sliver of suggestion, perhaps. A whimsical whiff, at most. If yesterday's slight rise continues, there is a slim possibility that the performance of the monthly Live Register figures could put a speck of dirt on the Government's unemployment record.
However small a speck that might be, we are less tolerant of small specks than we used to be. Unemployment might, just might, make it on to the agenda as an election issue.
According to official figures, Ireland's rate of unemployment is still the pride of Government. The Central Statistics Office (CSO) latest quarterly national household survey (QNHS) put the Irish unemployment rate at 4.5 per cent, still among the lowest in the EU. The live register survey does not measure unemployment per se. By including part-time workers and temporary workers signing on at the time of the latest survey, its level is almost twice the number of really unemployed persons, but changes in it can be extrapolated to update the QNHS-based unemployment rate measure.
According to the latest CSO release, that rate stayed at 4.5 per cent in December. Having said that, the latest figures spell trouble. With the same QNHS showing employment rising by 83,500 in the 12 months to August, you might imagine that the rate of unemployment would now be plummeting towards zero. Relatively speaking, being stuck at 4.5 per cent is not as good as it looks. Recent redundancy figures don't look good either: the latest figures, which the Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment release each month, show the number of layoffs firming at a monthly average of just over 2,000 each month in the last three months of the year, significantly higher than preceding months.
Between 1996 and 2000, an average of 10,000 people a year were laid off. In the five years between 2002 and 2006, that average rose to 25,000. Obviously, something significant has happened since 2001, but what was it and why isn't it driving up the unemployment rate?
Alan McQuaid of Bloxham stockbrokers has identified one possible factor: the increasing number of part-time and temporary workers. In principle, the shift to more flexible work arrangements wouldn't increase unemployment, but would increase "churning". In any country a core portion of the unemployment rate (about 3 per cent) reflects the fact that, at any one time, someone somewhere is in transition from one job to another (unemployment above this rate reflects the type of unemployment that the figures are really trying to measure - the extent to which people have no immediate job prospects).
The higher annual average of redundancies since 2001 may simply reflect the fact that the rate of churning has increased as the share of part time workers increases. That the unemployment rate has remained low nonetheless reflects two features of the labour market: the strong growth in construction sector employment and the strong increase in the number of public sector workers.
