THE NUMBER of people in receipt of unemployment benefit fell in September by the largest amount since the start of the recession.
The decline of 5,400 on August, when adjusted for seasonal factors, brought the numbers on welfare down to just less than 450,000.
The decline was the first monthly fall in the underlying claimant count since February, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), which compiled the Live Register data.
The raw numbers, before statisticians adjusted for seasonal trends, show a much bigger monthly claimant count decline of just under 25,000. September traditionally sees a sizeable fall in claims as students return to full-time education and firms hire after the summer holidays.
Less positively, those who have been in receipt of jobless benefits for more than a year reached 33 per cent of the total in September.
This is up by two percentage points on August and up from 21 per cent in October last year, when these detailed figures were first compiled.
Almost none of the decline in claimants in September owed to long-term benefit recipients signing off.
The Live Register includes part-time workers, seasonal and casual workers who are entitled to claim benefits in order to support their incomes. Of total claimants, 17.4 per cent, or 76,879 people, were casual and part-time workers in September.
The standardised unemployment rate, which was also published yesterday but differs from the claimant count, fell to 13.7 per cent of the workforce in September. This was a slight decline from the 13.8 per cent recorded in August.
Unemployment remains well above the EU average, however.
In July, the latest month for which EU-wide figures are available, the jobless rate in the EU was 9.6 per cent. Among the 27 EU member states, only five countries – Slovakia, Spain and the three Baltic states – have higher rates of joblessness.
Minister for Social Protection Éamon Ó Cuív described the drop in the number of people signing on in September as “encouraging and very welcome”.
He said it was evidence that the Live Register is stabilising, although he acknowledged that the fall was not entirely unexpected, given that it always drops in September as the academic year begins.
Fine Gael enterprise spokesman Richard Bruton described the fall as a “small let-up in the relentless rise in unemployment”.
He warned it should not be seen as a sign that the jobs crisis is easing. “Instead, it reflects the scourge of rising emigration,” Mr Bruton said.
He added: “The Government’s blinkered focus of writing whatever cheque is necessary to keep failed banks alive has blinded them to the human cost being felt in every corner and community of this country.”
Labour enterprise spokesman Willie Penrose welcomed the Live Register decline but said the underlying pattern remains unchanged with “virtually all of the decline” attributed to factors such as students returning to college.
