Over 300 people lost their jobs every day during month of February

THERE WERE 6,337 people made redundant last month, an increase of 123 per cent on the number who lost their jobs in February 2008.

The number is equivalent to over 300 people losing their jobs each day during the month.

Official figures released by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment yesterday show that 13,034 have been notified in the first two months of the year, an increase of 132 per cent on this time last year.

The figure reported for January, of 6,697, was an increase of 142 per cent over 2008.

A number of high profile companies announced redundancies during the month, including Ericsson, Elan, Grafton Group, Glanbia and Smart Telecom although these only feed into the official statistics when staff cease employment.

The figures show that the worst hit sectors of the economy were services, building and civil engineering and manufacturing. The Other Services category accounted for 2,076 job losses last month and 4,130 in the year to date. There were 1,943 redundancies in the building and civil engineering sector bringing the total for the year to date to 3,976.

Combined the metal manufacturing and engineering and other manufacturing groups which the department tracks accounted for 1,238 job losses in February and 2,861 for the year.

There were 151 redundancies in the banking, finance and insurance sectors last month. Some 4,493 men were made redundant last month and 1,844 women.

“The Government must awake from its slumber and recognise that we have a serious crisis in jobs, which if appropriate measures are not immediately put in place to counter could see the unemployment rate increase to 15 per cent this year,” said Patricia Callan, director of the Small Firms Association.

Ms Callan said the 132 per cent increase in the level of redundancies for the year to date “is a damning indictment of the absence of Government policy in this area”.

The Irish Small Medium Enterprises Association said “job losses continue to be spread throughout the whole economy”.

Mark Fielding, Isme chief executive, said: “Small business employers are crying out for measures to address the situation and provide them with an alternative to redundancies. What are urgently required are initiatives to address the cost of labour and specific targeted funding for labour- intensive businesses . . .”