Unemployment in NI Continues to Rise

The latest official government figures show that the number of unemployed people in Northern Ireland is still on the rise. The claimant count in December rose to 54,500, an increase of 500 since the last figures were made available with Northern Ireland being one of only two UK regions where the number of unemployed increased.

In a sign of the economic times there are now 50% more people claiming jobseekers' allowance here than one year ago, the second highest increase of any area in the UK with the UK average being only 36%.

This is perhaps not surprising given that in 2008 we at Citizens Advice Northern Ireland dealt with 2353 redundancy enquiries, which rose to 3333 enquiries during 2009, an increase of 42% on the previos year. This accounted for 19% of our total employment enquiries (17,987 in 2009), again a significant increase compared with 2008.

Growing numbers of redundancies will have the inevitable effect of increasing the number of people claiming Job Seekers Allowance. Enterprise minister Arlene Foster said that while she was encouraged that the Northern Ireland unemployment rate of 6.8% was still below the UK average of 7.8% she was "disappointed" with the rise in the actual number of people unemployed in Northern Ireland. She did however stress that the growth in claimants last month "is below the average monthly increase of over 2,000 recorded during the first six months of the year".

Angela McGowan, Chief Economist at Northern Bank, said the latest figures were "relatively positive."  She added, "Flexible working practices such as pay freezes and reduced hours combined with a relatively large proportion of public sector workers in the local labour market has resulted in local unemployment levels not reaching the eye-watering levels experienced in most of Europe and the US."