The live register has fallen to 170,100, the lowest seasonally adjusted figure since October 1982. During February, the number of people signing on fell by 4,069, or 1,600 when seasonally adjusted.
The standardised unemployment rate is now running at 4.9 per cent, compared with 5.7 per cent in April 1999.
However, unemployment is falling at a significantly slower rate in Dublin than in the rest of the Republic.
Welcoming the overall trends yesterday, the Irish National Organisation of the Unemployed said that the 1.6 per cent reduction in unemployment in Dublin, compared with 2.5 per cent nationally, "indicates a serious mismatch between skills and jobs being created". The Minister for Social, Community and Family Affairs, Mr Ahern, accepted the Government could not become complacent or "underestimate the scale of the problems faced by many in achieving employment that is well paid and sustainable". He also announced that he was planning an employability study by consultants "to examine the employability problems of those on the live register and to consider how best these might be tackled".
He estimated that the average number of people on the live register this year would fall to 165,000, or 90,000 less than last year's average. He pointed out that only 118,000, or 69 per cent, of those registered were signing on for a full week as unemployed people. The balance is made up of casual and part-time workers (14 per cent), people signing for social credits, (8 per cent) and people awaiting decisions on their entitlements.
The Labour spokesman on Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Mr Pat Rabbitte, said that, despite the fall in the live register, February had been "a bad month for jobs, with news of the imminent closure of the MKIR Panasonic plant in Dundalk, JB Clothing in Donegal and 40 job losses in the Clonshaugh Industrial Park [Co Dublin]", and the possibility of job losses at A.T. Cross in Ballinsloe, Co Galway.
He called on the Government to make every effort to find jobs for those being served with redundancy notices and said that plans to decentralise Civil Service departments should be targeted at towns with the greatest current need, rather than "the home towns of certain ministers".
In regional terms, the largest reduction in those signing on last month was in the south-west, with a drop of 757. Dublin was next with 732, followed by the south-east with 694. There was a fall of 551 in the west, 513 in the Border region, 354 in the mid-east and 252 in the mid-west. The lowest fall in the live register was in the midlands 216.
However, the annualised figures show that Dublin accounted for more than a third of the fall of 35,518, with a reduction of 13,497. Again, the midlands fared worst with a fall of only 1,264.
Most of the decrease in the live register is accounted for by men on unemployment assistance aged 25 or over. There was a reduction of 1,885 people in this category during February. This is in line with the annual trend, when 14,564 men over 25 signed off. People on unemployment assistance are categorised as long-term unemployed.
The reduction in males under 25 was also marked. They accounted for a reduction of 542 people on unemployment assistance. Over the past year, 5,547 young males have left the register.
Taken together, these groups account for 60 per cent of the monthly reduction and 56 per cent of the annualised figures.
A similar pattern emerges among the short-term unemployed, people claiming unemployment benefit. Taken together, men on either payment account for 80 per cent of all those who have left the live register.
