Sunday, May 6, 2012

6/5/2012: Live Register for April 2012 - Sub-trends Part 1

In the previous post I looked at the headline Live Register stats for April. Here, let's take a look at the sub-trends.


The number of long term claimants on the Live Register in April 2012 was 184,053, up 14,633 y/y and down 412 m/m. This is not seasonally adjusted. Per CSO: "The number of male long term claimants increased by 7,744 (+6.2%) in the year to April 2012, while the comparable increase for females was 6,889 (+15.4%) giving an overall annual increase of 14,633 (+8.6%) in the number of long term claimants.

Numbers of those in casual and part-time employment declined 274 to 88,442 in April 2012. Year on year the number is up 2,848 (+3.33%), compared to y/y change to March 2012 of +2,561 (+2.97%) - marking a slight deterioration of the trend. Overall, as chart below shows, things are running with a slightly upward trend. Again, you can opt to interpret part-time and casual employment as a good thing, or as a bad thing - glass half-full or half-empty, but generally, in my view, absent robust new jobs creation, this speaks more of a hidden unemployment, rather than of nascent entrepreneurship or a pick-up in some hiring activity.


Last 3 months average is now running at 1.89% increase on previous 3 months, and 3.33% rise y/y.

Now, for Live Register breakdown by nationality:



In April 2012, 77,015 non-Irish nationals were on the Live Register, down 1,065 from march 2012 (-1.36%) and down 508 (-0.66%) y/y. In March 2012, y/y decline was 514 (-0.65%). Since series is not adjusted for seasonal variation, it is worth looking at 3mo averages. 3mo average through April 2012 was up 1.72% on 3mo average through January 2012, but down 0.61% on same period 2011. The trend for non-nationals is therefore practically flat.

There were 352,986 nationals on the Live Register in April 2012, representing a decline of 2,988 on March (-0.84%) and a drop of 9,062 y/y (-2.50%). This compares to a y/y decline of 6,625 (-1.83%) in March 2012. 3mo through April 2012 average was down 0.41% compared to 3mo through January 2012 and declined 1.85% y/y. So the series are showing stronger downward momentum, but still a flat, albeit volatile trend. Chart above clearly shows the seasonality pattern and the flat trend.


April 2012 non-Irish nationals accounted for 17.91% of the total number of persons on the Live Register - an increase from 17.64% a year ago, but down from 17.99% in March 2012.


Stay tuned for occupational analysis of the LR in a subsequent post.

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