Tag: Unemployment

July Unemployment and Exchequer Returns

For an economy that’s supposedly in recovery, the unemployment figures seem to be puzzlingly weak. The July Live Register figures show an increase in the standardised unemployment rate from 13.4% in June to 13.7% in July. Slightly less negative were the July exchequer figures: Tax revenues had fallen from being on target in April to 1.6% behind target in June. The July figures reversed that trend to be only 1.4% behind target.

Still, both sets of figures raise a question. We keep hearing about how GDP figures are supposed to be coming in better than the assumptions penciled into the last budget: How is that to be reconciled with tax revenues being behind budget target and the unemployment rate coming in higher?  (The budget assumed a year average unemployment rate of 13.2%, which is the average for the year so far with the figure now moving in the wrong direction.)

Update: I was interested to hear Minister Eamon O’Cuiv explain the increase in the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate on seasonal factors. Sure unemployment always goes up in July, I heard him say on the radio. You’d think the CSO boffins would have factored that in to their calculations …

Quarterly National Household Survey for 2010:Q1

The latest QNHS figures have been released. They show the unemployment rate in the first quarter declining from 13.3% in 2009:Q4 to 12.9% in 2010:Q1. This will lead to a downward revision to the monthly Live Register based standardised unemployment rates, which had previously averaged 13.4%.

When the previous QNHS was released, I had expressed concern that the monthly Live Register figures may have started to underestimate true unemployment as expiry of eligibility for benefits saw people still seeking work falling off the Live Register. These figures show that this doesn’t seem to be a set pattern. The Live Register figures would have implied a small increase in the unemployment rate rather than a decrease.

A factor that is perhaps going in the other direction from the issue of benefit eligibility is that the QNHS measure of labour force participation continues to decline. It fell another three tenths in 2010:Q1 to stand at 61.2 percent, down from a peak of 64.6 percent in 2007:Q3. Over that period, male participation has fallen from 74.3 percent to 69.4 percent, while female participation has fallen from 55 percent to 53.2 percent. These declines in participation have been largely concentrated among the under 25s and the over 60s.

If some of these people deemed to be out of the labour force by the QNHS questions are still collecting unemployment benefits, then the Live Register measure will overstate unemployment as measured on the ILO basis.

The composition of unemployment is starting to become more skewed towards the long-term unemployed. In 2010:Q1, there were 112,600 long-term unemployed out of 275,000 unemployed in total. This compares with 49,100 long-term unemployed during the same quarter a year earlier when the total was 222,800.

May Unemployment up to 13.7%

This is disappointing news. The latest Live Register-based measure of the standardised unemployment rate is up to 13.7% having stayed flat at 13.4% over the previous few months. What worries me about these figures is that the Live Register may be underestimating the true trend. The last QNHS figures, for the fourth quarter of last year, showed a jump in unemployment even though the Live Register figures for that period had been flat.

April Live Register, March Retail Sales

Amid all the bond (and now equity) market excitement, it’s worth noting some economic news from home that’s not so bad and some news from abroad that’s positively good. Not so bad is today’s Live Register release which shows the standardised unemployment rate steady at 13.4% (though this is subject to all the usual caveats about whether this claims based measure is accurately capturing the underlying trends in joblessness) while the retail sales figures show some sign of stabilisation.

From abroad, the non-farm payrolls figures in the US showed 290,000 jobs added in April. While the unemployment rate from the household survey increased to 9.9%, this is partly due to a reversal of the decline in labour force participation. Payroll growth at this pace, if sustained, would start to reduce the unemployment rate.

March Unemployment Figures

The standardised unemployment rate for March was 13.4 percent (release here) having been revised up in previous month’s due to last week’s QNHS release. The Live Register based unemployment rate was flat over the first quarter but there are questions now about whether this reflects tightening of benefit coverage rather than underlying labour market conditions.