Hopes of an upturn in the economy gathered pace yesterday as live register figures showed the number claiming benefits fell 2.5 per cent in October.
Seasonally adjusted, 166,552 were receiving assistance last month, a 900 drop on September's figures. But this is still 5.6 per cent ahead of October 2002, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) said.
The sharpest fall was recorded in Dublin, where numbers signing on slipped 4.9 per cent. The lowest decline - 1.5 per cent - was in the west. There was a 6,600 rise in numbers working in the public sector in the year to October and a 0.7 per cent rise in construction employment during the previous month, separate CSO figures reveal.
The CSO warned against reading too much into the live register, saying the Quarterly National Household Survey is the best barometer of unemployment. The most recent national household survey shows the jobless rate holding firm at 4.4 per cent.
But its caution did not prevent politicians seizing on the data, with the Government hailing them as a vindication of its economic policies and opposition claiming they did not accurately reflect the fraught state of the labour market, in particular the manufacturing industry.
Fianna Fáil welcomed the drop in the register as proof of economic resilience.
Mr Seán Fleming, chair of the Dáil Committee on Finance and the Public Service, said: "This rate of unemployment compares very favourably to the rest of the euro zone and is dramatically less than it was when this Government came to power in 1997."
Fine Gael said the register was down despite, rather than because of, the Government's management of the economy.
The jump in public sector recruitment suggests the Cabinet is more concerned with improving the lot of those employed by the State than of private enterprise, said Mr Phil Hogan, the party's enterprise and employment spokesman.
He said: "Although this Government likes to think that the public sector is the be-all and end-all of economic management, any sensible economist knows that the private sector is vital for overall growth."
Mr Brendan Howlin, Labour finance spokesman, said recent job losses had still to show up on the register. He added: "It seems inevitable that the numbers signing on will continue to rise towards the end of the year as the lack of economic competitiveness continues to bite."
He also accused the coalition of being "rudderless and divided, and completely incapable of taking the decisions necessary to tackle the growing jobs crisis".
The bulk of public sector recruitment was in education (5,500), followed by the regional bodies (500) and the civil service (400).
