Tag: Unemployment

September Live Register

I don’t have time to report any detailed analysis of today’s Live Register figures but it is worth noting that September was the first month since December 2007 in which the unemployment rate did not rise. The standardised unemployment rate remained at 12.6%. As an aside, I’d note that this is still two tenths higher than the rate previously reported for August because higher second quarter unemployment in the QNHS, upon which this measure is based, saw the previous figures revised upwards.

Combined with last week’s GDP release, which showed flat seasonally adjusted GDP in the second quarter—consistent with a 6.7 percent year over year decline if GDP stayed flat for the second half of the year—there are now good reasons to believe that the economy is bottoming out. Of course, there must be concerns that further fiscal contraction could undo this stabilisation but hopefully by the time this kicks in there will be a decent world recovery to help out.

Dell Workers and the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund

RTE reports today that 14 million euro will be provided from the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund to people who have been made redundant at DELL to assist them in the process of retraining and finding a new job. The website of this fund is available below and the basic idea is that the fund will support people who have been displaced by trade-related developments. It is intended only to fund active programmes rather than social protection measures. It is worth some discussion of this in light of the long running debate here about active labour market intervention.

link here

Eurostat Youth Unemployment

Eurostat have released a document yesterday summarising youth unemployment rates for Europe.

link here

Cowen Announces Job Subsidy Scheme

An Taoiseach appeared today before the biennial conference of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions (incidentally, the highlight of their last conference was Mr. Cowen’s predecessor wondering aloud why those who criticised his economic policies didn’t go off and commit suicide.)  The Taoiseach’s remarks suggest that, despite David Begg’s disavowal of it, the €250 million job subsidy proposal is going ahead:

Drawing on detailed discussions with Congress, we are introducing a new initiative to safeguard vulnerable jobs through a Temporary Employment Subsidy Scheme. This will provide a subsidy to support jobs in exporting companies in the manufacturing or internationally-traded services sector.

Perhaps these detailed discussions with ICTU have changed the proposed scheme from the one criticised by me, Sarah Carey, and of course, David Begg.  However, there is no information in the official announcement to suggest so as of yet.  Indeed, it directs us to the document containing the original announcement of the scheme for “more information.”

As an aside, I’d note that the name of the scheme is a bit confusing.  I thought when I read it first that it was a scheme to promote temporary employment via a subsidy.  However, it appears instead to be a scheme that temporarily promotes employment via a subsidy.

Begg Critical of Job Subsidies

David Begg of ICTU has responded to Sarah Carey’s article on job subsidies.  The essence of his reply is twofold.  First, he also thinks it’s a bad plan. He writes that

Carey is correct to point out that a “jobs subsidy scheme” of the nature she outlined would be disastrous. It would be a waste of vital taxpayers’ funds, it would do nothing to ease the jobs crisis and, of course, it would be wide open to corruption and abuse.

Second, the plan wasn’t his idea:

Unfortunately, where she went wrong was in attributing such an initiative to congress. The truth is that precisely this approach has been repeatedly proposed by employer and business groups. We have opposed such feckless initiatives from the outset.

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