The number of people claiming unemployment benefit in the North rose slightly in December but union leaders warned this figure could rise sharply as 3,000 are under threat.
Official statistics released today show that 100 people joined Northern Ireland's dole queues in December. In total 44,000 people (5.6 per cent of the population) were unemployed over the last quarter - a small drop on a year ago.
But big redundancies announced last year by a range of firms, including Shorts, Harland & Wolff and Nortel have still to be included. Trade union leaders warned that bigger job cuts still to come pose a major threat, with the manufacturing sector expected to be hit hardest.
In Britain, the number of people out of work and claiming benefit fell further last month to a fresh 27-year low.
The Office for National Statistics said the number of people out of work and claiming the dole fell 5,800 to 928,300, the lowest since 1975. Economists had expected the so-called claimant measure of unemployment to fall by 3,100.
That left the jobless rate at 3.1 per cent in December, unchanged from the previous month. On the internationally recognised ILO measure, the jobless rate in the three months to November stood at 5.2 per cent, unchanged from the previous three months.
But jobs in Britain's manufacturing sector continued to fall. At 3.58 million, the level of manufacturing jobs is at an all-time low, officials said.
PA