Unemployment levels fall to 9.8% – 104,000 jobs created since 2012
The unemployment rate has dropped below 10%, to 9.8%, Fine Gael Councillor Noel Rock has reported. Figures for the month of April were released today (Thursday) by the Central Statistics Office.
“Unemployment figures have consistently fallen month-on-month since the Government launched its Action Plan for Jobs in early 2012,” he stated. “In 2012, a target of creating 100,000 new jobs by 2016 was set, which was thought to be very ambitious at that time,” the Councillor explained. “Today, the CSO has confirmed that (on a seasonally adjusted basis) an additional 104,600 jobs have been created since then. This is really positive news.
“However, I’m still aware that while this is a major milestone on the way back to full employment, there are still far too many people out of work and that we must do more to ensure everyone who wants to a job can have one.
“Reducing unemployment from 10% to 5% will be twice as difficult as cutting it from 15% to 10%, requiring us to redouble our efforts in reforming welfare to make work pay and providing the unemployed with the training and other supports needed to return to work.
“We need to go on creating 40,000 new jobs every year for the next few years in order to reach sustainable full employment. When we reach this target of 2.1m jobs in the economy by 2018, which is the plan, we will have replaced all the jobs lost during the recession with new more sustainable jobs.”