7/6/2013: Government 'scorecard' on unemployment: May 2013

In the previous post (http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/06/762013-live-register-may-2013-headline.html) I looked at the very broad trends in the Live Register data for May 2013. This time, let's do something slightly cheeky. Recall that the Government is keen on referencing jobs creation and unemployment reduction numbers as the sign of the success of the state policies. Recall also, that I have previously showed, repeatedly, that at the very least when it comes to broader unemployment data, these claims might be a serious over-stretching of reality (http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/05/3052013-official-broader-unemployment.html and http://trueeconomics.blogspot.ie/2013/05/3152013-part-time-v-full-time.html ).

Before we proceed, let us recognise the following facts and plausible conjectures:

1. Irish Government has inherited a massive task when it comes to dealing with unemployment and jobs creation on foot of the mistakes made by the previous Government and, more importantly, on foot of an unprecedented economic crisis we face;
2. Irish Government has very limited resources it can deploy to deal with unemployment crisis;
3. Irish Government has been making, in my opinion, honest efforts to attempt dealing with the crisis.

With the above points recognised, let's build a table measuring the current Government progress on jobs creation based on Live Register stats. With a dose of over-exaggeration (please, do not take this as a direct indictment of the Government efforts etc, just as a response to Government-own propensity to push out unemployment numbers as evidence of own success), here is 

Irish Government Performance Score Card

As marked by blue color, Official Live Register tends to confirm Government's claims: since taking the office, this coalition saw, to-date, a 3.8% reduction in the Official Live Register. However, the same period saw an increAse of 4.3% in casual and part-time workers who require some unemployment supports to sustain themselves and their families, as well as a massive 32% increase in state training programme participants. The latter is good, in so far as people are getting at least some training and apprenticeships access, but it is also bad news for the Government, as it means that in reality, actual numbers of those receiving Live Register unemployment assistance and supports rose 0.8% on Q1 2011, not fallen. Meanwhile, as we know, over Q1 2011-Q1 2013, official labour force numbers fell 0.55%.