04/08/2011: Live Register for July 2011

Live Register data is out today for July.

Per CSO: "The standardised unemployment rate in July 2011 was 14.3%, up slightly from a rate of 14.2% in June. The monthly increase in the standardised unemployment rate was caused by an increase of 1,500 (+0.3%) in the seasonally adjusted number of persons signing on the Live Register. The latest seasonally adjusted unemployment rate from the QNHS was 14.0% in the first quarter of 2011."

Mapping this:
Again, quoting CSO: "Since May 2010 the seasonally adjusted Live Register total has remained within the range of 440,700 and 448,200, indicating that while there have been fluctuations, the overall trend in the Live Register has remained relatively flat over this period."
Of course, the statement above can be checked against a shorter-term horizon trend: year on year there has been an increase of 2,400 in seasonally adjusted LR or 0.54%. In June 2011 the same figure was 4,600 or +1.04%, suggesting that the July bounce up is rather shallow. 3mo moving average for current period is up 1.13% on previous period. This confirms CSO statement.

In July 2011 there were 470,284 people signing on the Live Register representing an increase of 3,460 (+0.7%) over the year. Adjusting for seasonality, total number of signees was 447,900 in July against 446,400 in June - a rise of 1,500 down from a previous monthly increase of 2,500.
Similarly in unadjusted terms, July increase was less than that recorded in June 2011 (+5,066 or +1.1%) and far less than the increase of 34,403 (+8.0%) seen in the year to July 2010.

CSO highlights that "On a seasonally adjusted basis there were monthly increases of 1,300 females and 300 males on the Live Register in July 2011. The number of female claimants increased by 6,150 (+3.7%), to 172,514 over the year while the number of male claimants decreased by 2,690 (-0.9%) to 297,770. This compares with increases of 15,280 (+10.1%) and 19,123 (+6.8%) for females and males respectively in the year to July 2010." Again, the trend is relatively clear here with later stages of unemployment driving up female signings to LR, while emigration is most likely driving male exists in the early stages of the process.

Another structural problem we face is that of long-term unemployment: "The number of long term claimants increased by 45,508 in the year to July 2011, bringing to 40.4% the proportion of claimants that have now been on the Live Register for one year or more. In July 2010 long term claimants made up 31.0% of the total Live Register."

The quality of employment is not improving either. "There were 85,865 casual and part-time workers on the Live Register in July, which represents 18.3% of the total Live Register. This compares with 16.9% one year earlier when there were 79,072 casual and part-time workers on the Live Register. In the year to July 2011 the number of casual and part-time workers increased by 6,793 (+8.6%), with the number of males increasing by 4,015 (+9.6%) and the
number of females increasing by 2,778 (+7.4%)."

• There were no notable changes in July patterns in terms of LR signees under- and over-25 years of age. Year on year, numbers of LR signees 25 years and older increased by 7,500 or 2.09%, while number of signees under 25 years of age has declined 5,100 or -5.86%.
• Numbers of casual and part-time workers rose seasonally adjusted 6,793 year on year in July (up 8.59%)
  

Per CSO analysis: "In July Irish nationals accounted for 83.1% (390,999) of the number of persons on the Live Register. Of the 79,285 non-Irish nationals, the largest constituent group
on the Live Register continued to be nationals from the EU15 to EU27 States (41,732), followed by the UK (19,006). In the year to July 2011 the number of Irish nationals on the Live Register increased by 3,387 (+0.9%), while the number of non-Irish nationals increased by 73 (+0.1%)."