What strikes me as strange in they statistics is a comparison with the equivalent in the UK. In the UK the claimant count, as it is termed is around 800,000 odd. But ireland has a live register of 200,000 odd.
Anyone know the basis for the difference? Simply on a per capita basis, a “live register” in UK should be expected to total around 3 million. I don’t get it.
I believe, though, that this is the correct figure to highlight as self-employed workers are only entitled to Jobseekers Benefit/Allowance. To report unemployment as simply those who are in receipt of unemployment benefit would be to massively understate the problem.
The Live Register will hit 300k at some point in 09 - no doubt. This is all the crap about only 25 or 30k job losses in the construction sector bollix coming home to roost. I pointed out some time ago that there will be over 100k less working in construction by the end of 09 from it’s peak and this is now taking place plus the secondary effects are rapidly kicking in.
I reckon that overall employment in the economy is now falling and I expect that there wll be circa 40k less at work in the economy by years end than at the begining.
One of the great innovations of the Thatcher years (which has been continued by all governments since) was to remove from the unemployment register anyone who was in receipt of another payment from the social services. So the low-paid, temporary workers, those without enough stamp or the wrong kind of stamp, and those temporarily between jobs etc. are not counted as unemployed in the UK.
As in the US, the headline figures are very misleading as they only count a specific class of unemployed - if we are not giving you unemployment benefit, then you can’t be unemployed, can you?
It’s this sort of thing that gives me some sympathy for economists. The base figures are just bad, so how can an assessment of the state of the economy be made?
A family friend is a part time lecturer in a college in the UK, and he was telling me a few years ago how the gubernment push the young unemployed into courses to keep them off the Live Register. Many don’t turn up, but the fact that they’re name is on a course list means they aren’t on the Live Register. So they become forgotten about for the years they’re supposed to be on the course.
