Latest employment figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO ) have exposed a lethal cocktail of long-term unemployment, widespread youth joblessness and forced emigration, Fine Gael Senator, John Paul Phelan, says.
Days after his analysis of jobless statistics for Kilkenny and Carlow showed a doubling of those on the live register in most parts of the constituency over the past two years, the 32 year-old, who is Seanad spokesman on Enterprise, Trade and Employment said:
“The latest employment figures are a bitter disappointment. These figures represent the worst quarterly decline in over a year, and reverse the trend of the last six quarters when the rate of job losses was decelerating.
“Many of the underlying features demonstrate how deep-seated the problem is becoming:
- Male unemployment has now reached 16.7 per cent - that’s one in six, while among males under 25 the rate of unemployment is now one in three;
- Almost half of the unemployed are long-term unemployed, representing 6.5 per cent of the workforce. That is five times what it was at the end of 2007;
- The concentration of job losses among young people is devastating - 84 per cent of job losses have been among those aged under 35 and 55 per cent of them among those aged under 25. This is what has been feeding the surging emigration numbers.
“There has been a great deal of talk about the crisis in our public finances and in our banks. The real crisis is the crisis in employment and the devastation it is inflicting on people’s lives.
“Budgets will never succeed if their sole focus is on fixing the deficit and fixing the banks. That has been the fatal mistake in this Budget once again. It is vital that at the core of any Budget is a credible strategy to drive enterprise and jobs.
“At the core of Fine Gael’s alternative budget is a credible growth and jobs strategy, tackling the scarcity of credit for small business; the need for strategic investment in key economic arteries such as broadband and energy; work experience and activation on a much more ambitious scale; immediate measures to help businesses survive — cutting employers’ PRSI on the low-paid, eliminating travel tax, cutting VAT on labour intensive activities.
“Ireland needs a Prices, Costs and Incomes Policy to tackle competitiveness on a broad basis. The attack on the minimum wage, while ignoring rip-off and excessive costs created by much more powerful groups, is neither fair nor effective.”
