Unemployment Figures Rise Again!

StPatsSLayer

Todays unemployment figures have risen again today.

A extra 350 people registered unemployed fro the month of December.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0112/liveregister.html

Althought only a slight increase it is normal at this time of year for Unemployment figures to take a small drop due to all the seasonal jobs people take.

The worrying thing is with the end of seasonal jobs coming up now this would certainly see unemployment take a steper rise for the month of January.

What however is causing this rise?

Is it the Economy?

Are we really in a false economy. For instance is our Economy just a construction Economy. Many people feel and beleive that Construction must surely come to a ned soon and that will see a Housing Crash.

Is It Immigration?

Are Migrants taking Seasonal Jobs that Irish people would normally work?

Is it just a blip?

Is this just a blip, and we will see a drop in unemployment from January?

mike65

Hmmmmmmm.

Mike.

Time Magazine

StPatsSLayer wrote:

Is It Immigration?

Are Migrants taking Seasonal Jobs that Irish people would normally work?

The ESRI have done studies on job stealing by immigrants. It does not happen on anything above an anecdotal level.

If you don't believe me feel free to watch Prof Frances Ruane, the Director of the ESRI, state as much during this interview.

StPatsSLayer

In all fairness I would like to see some independent research.

So are you saying this is a blip or a decline in the Irish Economy?

For instance the rate of inflation seems to keep on growing. Even Pat Rabbitte was claiming the economy could be on a slowdoen.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0111/economy.html

I just find it puzziling that at a time when statistical unemployment falls during the christmas period due to seasonal jobs we now have a rise.

oscarBravo

StPatsSLayer wrote:

In all fairness I would like to see some independent research.

Independent of what, exactly?

StPatsSLayer

oscarBravo wrote:

Independent of what, exactly?

I have seen so much information For immigtation and against immigration.

I would just like to see a fair report done independently in truth and fairness.

there always seems to be some agenda behind most immigration researches.

I just dont beleive anything I read on immigration for and against.

Thus I tend to ignore the subject from institutes.

I feel hearing peoples views and experiences tend to be the best way of deciding what is fact or fiction, but then you are relying on a persons opinion too!

Even on here immigration Threads get coshed before any proper discussion gets going.


P>S this isnt a immigration thread so please dont close it, I would just like peoples views on Unemployment.

I for one think it is a sign that the economy is heading for trouble.

Time Magazine

StPatsSLayer wrote:

In all fairness I would like to see some independent research.

In all fairness I'd like you to look at the research before you dismiss it as non-independent.

It's strange for someone so interested about the economy to have not heard of the ESRI.

Time Magazine

StPatsSLayer wrote:

I just dont beleive anything I read on immigration for and against.

That's just foolish. And anyway, the ESRI's report was on employment, and specifically on whether Irish workers were being displaced. Do you not believe what they have to say? If not, why?

P>S this isnt a immigration thread so please dont close it, I would just like peoples views on Unemployment.

It's the lowest in the OECD.

StPatsSLayer

Ibid wrote:

In all fairness I'd like you to look at the research before you dismiss it as non-independent.

It's strange for someone so interested about the economy to have not heard of the ESRI.

I have heard of the ERSI. I just feel that most institutes are funded by Goverments no matter how independent they claim to be. I always feel that political bodies always have a intreast in what information is given to the public.

I think outside institutes/studies away from any political interference can be the only truely independent study.

But I will look at the study and come back to you.

StPatsSLayer

Ibid wrote:

That's just foolish. And anyway, the ESRI's report was on employment, and specifically on whether Irish workers were being displaced. Do you not believe what they have to say? If not, why?


It's the lowest in the OECD.

Is that on actual figures or %?

As surely Romania and Bulgaria now would have the highest rates.

Time Magazine

The ESRI are as independent as you'll get; they're constantly critiquing policy. Only a couple of weeks ago they released a savage attack on Transport 21.

Our unemployment rate is about 4.2%. Romania's unemployment rate in Q3 of 2006 was 5% which is very respectable, lower than America's of about 6% and Germany and France's of around 10%. Bulgaria's is in line with Germany's and France's at 10.6%, but that has fallen from 18% since 2000 - a 40% fall - which will only continue with EU accession.

Edit: and Romanians and Bulgarians have to get permits to work here, a.k.a. they can't.

BendiBus

It's 350 people. In a workforce of over 2 million. And a snapshot at one point in time. It is pretty meaningless by itself.

Hobbes

StPatsSLayer wrote:

Is It Immigration?

Are Migrants taking Seasonal Jobs that Irish people would normally work?

Is it just a blip?

Is this just a blip, and we will see a drop in unemployment from January?

You know all those question marks reminded me of this..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juRVGa91lNM

Gurgle

StPatsSLayer wrote:

A extra 350 people registered unemployed fro the month of December.

http://www.rte.ie/news/2007/0112/liveregister.html

From this link:

The seasonally adjusted total rose by 300 from November to 156,600. This was the third increase in a row, but the figure is still 400 lower than in December 2005.

That statement seems to contradict itself. If the figure is 400 lower than in December 2005 then how do they calculate the seasonally adjusted total?

It also contradicts the OP, as its 300 not 350.

Either way, its a miniscule number that indicates nothing.

Time Magazine

StPatsSLayer wrote:

Even on here immigration Threads get coshed before any proper discussion gets going.

And you've just signed up...

gandalf

350 is nothing, considering most seasonal jobs would be taken up by students anyway. Erosion of manufacturing jobs would be more of a worry to me.

mike65

I'm more interested in the fact that the unemployment level is remarkable static. 250,000 people arrive over the last 30 months or so, the natives are joining the workforce (at what net rate I dunno) and yet the live register shows the % rate as largely unchanged. 80% of claimants are defined as short term which is signing for less than 6 months.

Mike.

Raskolnikov

Just so people know, the live register already has factored in seasonal factors, so this is an actual increase in unemployment.

Ibid wrote:

The ESRI have done studies on job stealing by immigrants. It does not happen on anything above an anecdotal level.

So you're saying that all jobs taken by immigrants wouldn't have otherwise been filled by an Irish person?

Ibid wrote:

Our unemployment rate is about 4.2%. . . . It's the lowest in the OECD.

Neither of those statements is true. The unemployment rate is 4.5% and there are several OECD countries with lower rates of unemployment than us.

Not wanting to deviate from the topic at hand (rising unemployment) so I'll give my two cents. The first is that that I think we reached the highwater mark of employment a few years back. The second cent, we have a rocky road ahead of us. Pfizer Ireland are currently having a worldwide review of operations at the moment. It's likely that Ireland is going to be hit with job losses due to the failure of their latest drug to pass clinical trials. Given that Ireland has been uniquely spared from job losses by Pfizer worldwide, we could be in an awful lot of trouble down here. If we get 10% job losses (optimistic), it'll mean over 200 people directly losing their jobs. This trend is being repeated in Intel, HP, Microsoft, Dell and the other major multinational employers. The worst thing, is that these are well payed jobs and are currently irreplaceable.

InFront

I heard this at lunchtime today, and thought immediately of the last thread you made on this issue, and how you must have been a bit upset at this rather petty statistic.
An increase in unemplyment from 156,000 to 156,300 is a drop in the ocean, and especially when you compare it to the drop in unemployment by 2,900 in September!

The only, scarcely viable economic argument that I consider an anti-immigrationists to have and is that immigrants cause a decrease in wages by alleviating labour demand. In terms of the Irish economy, this was demonstrated by research carried out by Dr. Alan Barrett in a paper he printed last year (although he is of the ESRI, and that not being independent, you may wish to believe that immigration actually positively effects Irish wages?)

Immigration contributes to a rise in our GNP That is a known fact. Is that not a policy the government should pursue? What evidence is there to curb immigration?

How many of us have listened to people we know go on and on about immigration and the terror it’s causing to a soaring economy like ours, when we could, if we wanted, have turned around and asked “how’s you uncle in America?”. That old familiar mantra ‘not in my back yard’ is, in my experience, the back-bone of anti-immigration policy.

A total of 184,000, just over 9 per cent of our work force today, are foreign-nationals. We know that on average every 100 Irish workers support 47 children under 15 years of age and 70 people over that age - ie 117 dependants in all. Do you honestly think immigrants are doing more harm than good? They in their numbers, are contributing to paying for your public representatives, educational system, health system, your state pension.

Hobbes

Raskolnikov wrote:

So you're saying that all jobs taken by immigrants wouldn't have otherwise been filled by an Irish person?

In some cases no. IBM for example actually has quite a number of job vacancies that they have simply been unable to fill, even with the influx of immigrants. Simply because there are not enough people specialized in those areas in Ireland. There are a couple of others I was aware of in the financial sector as well that had been looking for people to fill positions for months.

Neither of those statements is true. The unemployment rate is 4.5% and there are several OECD countries with lower rates of unemployment than us.

Do you have a quote for that source? Because last I looked it was between 4.2% and 4.4%. That was from EU statistics office.

Given that Ireland has been uniquely spared from job losses by Pfizer worldwide, we could be in an awful lot of trouble down here. If we get 10% job losses (optimistic), it'll mean over 200 people directly losing their jobs.

200 isn't a lot. Actually around 200 went onto the dole a week or so ago. Some company shut down to move most of its work to Germany.

Of course it may be a lot for the company in question.

Not entirely sure how we can blame immigrants on that one.

This trend is being repeated in Intel, HP, Microsoft, Dell and the other major multinational employers.

Again please back this up with actual facts because I don't believe it is true at all. Dell for example let a lot of its support teams go some years back, instead of giving them full time employment they hire them on contract instead as seperate limited companies. But as I said that was years ago.

Time Magazine

Raskolnikov wrote:

So you're saying that all jobs taken by immigrants wouldn't have otherwise been filled by an Irish person?

No. I specifically mentioned (light-heartedly) "stealing", i.e. displacement. You cannot displace what you do not already have.

Neither of those statements is true. The unemployment rate is 4.5%

Looking at OECD site, this link may get you directly there, and its says 4.2% for the latest quarter. It does rise to 4.4% over the year though, granted. But you're still off with your 4.5% claim.

and there are several OECD countries with lower rates of unemployment than us.

You're right, my mistake. Taking the yearly average, Korea and New Zealand have lower rates, how mis-representative of me. I was thinking of the EU when I made that statement. Yet again, I wouldn't call two "several". Nor would I consider third out of the 42 richest nations in the world bad.

mike65

Its a well known phenomena that at a certain point, the numbers registered as unemployed will not fall further (in a free market), there will always be a % who frankly will not work if they can avoid it (Seamus Brennan talked about this just before Christmas) while there will always be a certain number who are between jobs for whatever reason. I'd say that 4% is about that number here - it could be driven down further with payed for schemes but thats just massaging the figures

Mike.

InFront

While I largely agree with you Mike, that 4.2% represents the bones of 155,000 people. I feel a bit more comfortable in trusting that a good proportion of them are not just completely lazy spongers.
While this may be the case with such a relatively low figure, the government should not forget the lot of the illiterate people, for example, or poorly educated divorcees. I don't believe those who are socially and economically so disadvantaged as them should have their fate resigned to unemployment: for theirs and for our sake.

MrPudding

Hobbes wrote:

Again please back this up with actual facts because I don't believe it is true at all. Dell for example let a lot of its support teams go some years back, instead of giving them full time employment they hire them on contract instead as seperate limited companies. But as I said that was years ago.

Not quite sure if that is correct. I worked there, in Cherrywood, for a couple of years. Dell have very few contractors.

Actual site visits are undertaken my third party companies but that was always the way, they never had staff to do that.

The Enterprise Expert Centre in Cherrywood hires a lot of immigrants. This is simply because it supports customers in over 20 languages and they cannot get the required skill sets from irish people.

What people should be more worried about is support sections moving to lower cost countries. Several support areas have been moved to Bangalore, for example, non gold client support.

Client gold support has been move to Glasgow. My understanding is the manufacturing plant is Limerick will be moving to Poland soon.

If there are any problems with the big multinationals it is outsourcing to cheaper countries, not replacing irish staff with immigrants.

MrP

Rock Climber

It's nice to see a thread on immigration and yes thats what it is proceeding along nicely.
The thread starters points being debunked right left and centre,I see.
Going to the bother of putting foward such weak premises in the first place is such a waste of time for him to be honest but helpfull for the rest of us because we get to read Ibids posts.

Go Ibid!

Now whilst I'm here...

MadsL

Intel have laid off people, mostly as a response to AMD and lowered profits. I'd expect a few more layoffs. This would probably account for the upward blip. (6,500 employees at Intel - a small % = a good few)

InFront

MrPudding wrote:

What people should be more worried about is support sections moving to lower cost countries. Several support areas have been moved to Bangalore, for example, non gold client support.
...

If there are any problems with the big multinationals it is outsourcing to cheaper countries, not replacing irish staff with immigrants.

That's true. Whether it's 100 black guys working on computers and 50 white men on the dole, at least it's not 150 men on the dole. It makes no difference to GNP whether employees are Irish or Slavs or Asian or African or Australian. The idea is that the GNP it all goes to is Irish.

Victor

The CSO report http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/labour_market/current/lreg.pdf

The Live Register is not designed to measure unemployment. It includes part-time workers (those who work up to three days a week), seasonal and casual workers entitled to Jobseekers Benefit or Assistance. Unemployment is measured by the Quarterly National Household Survey and the latest seasonally adjusted figure, for June to August 2006, is 96,500 persons unemployed.

So, the basic premise of the thread is wrong.

The headline figure of 156,600 is lower than 1 year ago and lower than 2 years ago, although yes, it is a tiny amount up compared to November (0.19% = 300/156,300).

Seasonally Adjusted Totals are only estimated to the nearest 100.

InFront wrote:

While I largely agree with you Mike, that 4.2% represents the bones of 155,000 people.

No, 4.2% of about 2m people is about 96,500 people, the difference being made up of part-time employees and others who are signing on.

Please advise me which of the following black lines is rising. ITS REALLY IMPORANT TO ME!!!!

Time Magazine

mike65 wrote:

Its a well known phenomena that at a certain point, the numbers registered as unemployed will not fall further (in a free market), there will always be a % who frankly will not work if they can avoid it

Yeah it's an interesting concept that. It's not just laziness though, it should be noted. Take for example our current employment situation. We have 4.2% unemployment, and let's say we want to lower it.

We can do a few things. We could lower unemployment benefit, but that would have a pretty negative social impact. So let's look at other things.

We could lower income taxes. This would make work/labour relatively more attractive. However this does not just apply to the unemployed, it might tempt students like myself to ditch the library and go work somewhere.

We could try raise wages/minimum wage to €10. But this invariably means that Tesco et al (reasonably) say we're not paying trolley-boys or bag-packers that and they lay people off. Higher wages also attract people from abroad to come; or, on a more local level, higher wages in Dublin mean people up themselves from the schticks.

On a more technical level, there is what's called the Natural Rate of Unemployment, which is a terrible name, because it's not "natural" but rather structural. There's a slightly better link here. It's widely regarded that the Natural Rate is in or around 6%. But, as I said, this is not "natural", it's structural based on aggregate choices on things like competition, wages, the power of unions, unemployment benefit, inflation, the price level and all of that. It's quite possible that, say, increased acceptance on competition would lower the non-cyclical rate.

Yer Man wrote:

Goe Team Ibid!

Thanks .

Hobbes

mike65 wrote:

Its a well known phenomena that at a certain point, the numbers registered as unemployed will not fall further (in a free market), there will always be a % who frankly will not work if they can avoid it

Yea I have a friend who works in FAS and said such a thing. There are a lot of people who simply are unemployable or do not want a job. I forget how much of that percentage they would take up though. Not 4% I would guess.

MrPudding wrote:

Not quite sure if that is correct. I worked there, in Cherrywood, for a couple of years. Dell have very few contractors.

Well I work with a guy who used to work in dell many years ago and I had an engineer out to the house a couple of months back. They said the same. That at one time they had a job in Dell and that they were laid off. What dell did then is still use some of the guys services but they had to set up as limited companies. Think getronics for example is ex-Dell people (can't confirm).

But otherwise your correct.

mike65

Victor where did you fish that "graph" out of?

Mike.

Gurgle

Victor wrote:

Please advise me which of the following black lines is rising. ITS REALLY IMPORANT TO ME!!!!

THEY'RE ALL RISING STRAIGHT UP!!!!

You just can't see that because of your blinkered view on reality and the fact that you haven't bothered to research properly and you haven't turned your monitor 90 degrees anti-clockwise.

Hobbes wrote:

Yea I have a friend who works in FAS and said such a thing. There are a lot of people who simply are unemployable or do not want a job. I forget how much of that percentage they would take up though. Not 4% I would guess.

That 4.2% also includes:
- People recently laid off who are enjoying a couple of months living off redundancy before looking for another job.
- Scumbags, criminal record holders, drug addicts; People you wouldn't trust with a shovel and a pile of shite
- Lazy Freeloaders
- Borderline mentally disabled
- Blackmarket cash in hand workers
- Tax dodgers

Rock Climber

Gurgle wrote:

THEY'RE ALL RISING STRAIGHT UP!!!!

You just can't see that because of your blinkered view on reality and the fact that you haven't bothered to research properly and you haven't turned your monitor 90 degrees anti-clockwise.

LoL-thats funny.I thought it was a personal attack first but then I realised...

Try not to be doing that though

fly_agaric

Hobbes wrote:

In some cases no. IBM for example actually has quite a number of job vacancies that they have simply been unable to fill, even with the influx of immigrants. Simply because there are not enough people specialized in those areas in Ireland.

Offtopic, but, you mean that they can't find people who are exactly right for the job and come at the right price., don't you?:)
Most importantly, people who will not cost any time (=money) or money (also = money:)) to train up/break in.
The way businesses operate now with staff on short-term contracts you may just train someone up for their role only to let them go quite rapidly anyway...
I mean ffs, with a potential labour market of (at a guess) 200 million people I'm sure they could fill the jobs quicker if they really wanted to/were willing to compromise a bit.

MrPudding

fly_agaric wrote:

I mean ffs, with a potential labour market of (at a guess) 200 million people I'm sure they could fill the jobs quicker if they really wanted to/were willing to compromise a bit.

I can picture the interview. Well Paddy, you have all the skill we need. Good mainframe experience and some nice storage in there too. It's a shame we need someone that speaks technical Polish as the successful candidate will be supporting the Polish market.

Believe it or not, there are perfectly valid reasons for an Irish person not getting a job in Ireland other than the company trying to make extra money.

MrP

Mucco

Victor wrote:

No, 4.2% of about 2m people is about 96,500 people, the difference being made up of part-time employees and others who are signing on.

Please advise me which of the following black lines is rising. ITS REALLY IMPORANT TO ME!!!!

Our unemployment rate has been 4.5% +-0.5% since 2000 despite these millions of immigrants stealing our jobs. (Eurostat)

I'm not really sure what the point of this thread is?

MrPudding

Mucco wrote:

I'm not really sure what the point of this thread is?

I think it is the standard "they are stealing our jobs and our wimim" thread.

MrP

Gurgle

MrPudding wrote:

I can picture the interview. Well Paddy, you have all the skill we need. Good mainframe experience and some nice storage in there too. It's a shame we need someone that speaks technical Polish as the successful candidate will be supporting the Polish market.

Actually, on that topic;

Why are there so many call centres in Ireland supporting non english speaking parts of europe?

Of course its a very important sector of our economy, but I don't really understand how it got to be that way. Especially considering that wages are lower in the countries which are the market for the tech support.

MrPudding

Gurgle wrote:

Actually, on that topic;

Why are there so many call centres in Ireland supporting non english speaking parts of europe?

Of course its a very important sector of our economy, but I don't really understand how it got to be that way. Especially considering that wages are lower in the countries which are the market for the tech support.

Good question. The only one I am personally familiar with is Dell. I would imagine one of the main drivers is the low corporation tax rate.

Another reason is possibly that the good tecnical people have already left their respective countries as the money is crap. Most of the people in the Expert Centre in Dell came from HP and had already left their home countries. Dell were also recruiting in other European Countries as Ireland was very attractive to people.

That said, in the case of Dell, most of the countries suppported out of Dublin do have local support centres as well. They are for lower levels of support andfor people who have not paid extra. All EMC storage support was run out of Cherrywood regardless of the country. I think this is probably for operational reasons more than anything.

Given that cost are rising I think we will probably see even the high level stuff starting to move. Before I left Dell they were having serious trouble with recruitment and were satrting to form "Gold" support teams inthe local centres to help with overflow. I bad sign IMO.

Apparently the plant in Limerick will be moving to Poland, that is not good.

MrP

is_that_so

MrPudding wrote:

Apparently the plant in Limerick will be moving to Poland, that is not good.

MrP

I don't believe that is true. The plant in Poland is to serve other parts of Europe. There is a suggestion that they will move some production. This link highlights the disadvantages of going cheap.

On Topic. AFAIK we consider 4% as pretty much full employment in Western countries as it is tends to be hard to shift the remaining group for some of the reasons posted. There are still shortages in areas and IMO what will have most effect on the figure this year is our ability to keep wage inflation under control. That will be a tough task given the increases we have already seen. So we could see it creep up a bit more this year.

fly_agaric

MrPudding wrote:

Believe it or not, there are perfectly valid reasons for an Irish person not getting a job in Ireland other than the company trying to make extra money.
MrP

Hobbes was talking about unfillable vacancies. I didn't think he meant just unfillable with Irish people.

I was saying that if you consider the whole EU labour market there should surely be somone, Irish or not (there are not "200 million" Irish people), who can be got for the job and the companies involved must be just being excessively picky, for reasons of greed.

I sort of don't understand that sentence anyway. All of the stuff companies do (including looking for a foriegn person rather than someone Irish for a job they have based in Ireland) is obviously done in order to make more profits in so far as regulations and other constraints allow.

{e.g. Gurgle mentioning basing call centres here which need fluent speakers of x language despite costs being lower in the country where that language is spoken + posssibly employees being easier to find there. Then you suggested that the tax laws, regs etc here might make Ireland a better call-centre location than the home country (which of course allows the company to make more money)...}

Victor

mike65 wrote:

Victor where did you fish that "graph" out of?

From the report I linked to. Note that a seasonally adjusted graph may be flatter than a raw data graph.

Victor wrote:

The CSO report http://www.cso.ie/releasespublications/documents/labour_market/current/lreg.pdf So, the basic premise of the thread is wrong.

shoegirl

mike65 wrote:

I'm more interested in the fact that the unemployment level is remarkable static. 250,000 people arrive over the last 30 months or so, the natives are joining the workforce (at what net rate I dunno) and yet the live register shows the % rate as largely unchanged. 80% of claimants are defined as short term which is signing for less than 6 months.

Its indeed unique, however there is a caveat.
The overall workforce is growing rapidly (due to new jobs being created - many of them filled by migrant workers), however the unemployment rate is remaining steady. If the statistics are to remain relatively steady this means that the net number of people unemployed is in fact growing.

Since 0% of the incoming migrant population is entitled to social welfare this would suggest that the net number of IRISH people unemployed is rising steadily as the vast majority of new applicants for unemployment benefit are going to be Irish (this will steadily decrease as the numbers of migrant workers working here for 2+ years increases and they become entitled to welfare).

I would suggest that the main reason for this is the 12% average year-on-year increase in base welfare rates over the last 6 years. This compares with a raw increase of 43% in the minimum wage. As a result a worker on the minimum wage is gaining less year on year than a welfare recipient. With rising rents (impacting the lower paid more directly as they are almost entirely priced out of the housing market) this makes welfare dependency a more attractive lifestyle for many people. Since mingrants are not entitled to get these benefits it is solely (right now) impacting the native population. I would suspect that over the next 2 years we shall see a dramatic overall increase in the unemployment rate as migrants here more than 2 years become entitled to welfare. The unfortunate cumulative impact of many of the budgets will be that for an increasing number of people, work will not pay more than welfare. This, in the long term, will gradually cause an increase in social welfare dependency - and much of it will be through non-unemployment benefits such as lone parent, supplementary welfare allowance and disability payments.