Live Register total falls again as labour market tightens

A further 1,200 people came off the Live Register last month, a reflection of the tightening labour market, figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show. The CSO said seasonally adjusted Live Register total for July was 183,300, down 0.7 per cent from the previous month.

The number of people receiving benefits has fallen sharply since the removal of Covid-19 restrictions and the ending of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) in March this year.

In March, 436,056 people were on the Live Register or were benefitting from the PUP, the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) or the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS). This was down from a pandemic high of just under 1.2 million in April 2020.

The Live Register is not a measure of unemployment as people with part-time work can be entitled to benefits, but it does broadly track improvements in the labour market.

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Separate figures last week indicated that headline unemployment in the Irish economy fell to a 21-year low of 4.2 per cent in July as increased economic activity in the wake of Covid dragged more people back to work. This was down from a rate of almost 6 per cent a year ago. The last time the State’s jobless rate was this low was June 2001.