Northern Ireland sent out mixed messages on the state of its economy today, a small rise in unemployment but substantial increases in manufacturing output.
Sir Reg Empey, the Stormont Enterprise, Trade and Investment minister, said the prospects for the local economy remained "reasonably good" despite a number of recent setbacks.
The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate for the last quarter was up 1,000 at 47,000 - 6.2 per cent - a 0.1 per cent increase on the previous quarter. It was still down 1 per cent on the same time last year.
But he warned there were more than 2,000 more redundancies in the pipeline following job losses in the technology and textile sectors.
Mr Empey also said the present political crisis threatening the Stormont Assemblyand the world-wide economic slowdown, were also causes for concern.
"The economy is unlikely to remain immune from the effects of the current political uncertainty and the impact of international market forces," he said.
Textiles, once the mainstay of the North’s economy, have been in decline for years in the face of cheap foreign imports and are destined to continue the downward slide.
On the positive side, the minister pointed to jumps in manufacturing output, which showed an increase of 2.3 per cent in the first quarter of the year against the previous quarter and a rise of 8.1 per cent on the same time last year.
Mr Empey said: "Northern Ireland compares favourably with the UK as a whole where manufacturing output decreased by 0.7 per cent on the quarter and increased by 1.2 per cent over the year."
Also, the number of people in employment continued to rise -up 25,000 in the past year to 705,000.
However, the minister said more needed to be done to tackle long term unemployment. There were 20,000 who had been out of work for more than a year, an increase of 3.5 per cent on the year.
PA