Press Statement

Preasráiteas

02 April 2020

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (2^nd April 2020) issued results from the Live Register in respect of March 2020. Today’s release also includes details regarding the recent introduction of COVID-19 payment schemes.

Edel Flannery, Senior Statistician, CSO explains the approach taken today with regard to the publication of today’s Live Register and COVID-19 payments:

“The majority of those whose income from employment has been affected due to COVID-19 are currently being facilitated through the COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment which is administered by the DEASP, while a smaller cohort are currently being facilitated through the Revenue Temporary COVID-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme.

These emergency payments are not captured in the traditional methodology of the Live Register which is a historical series that captures the number of claimants for Jobseekers Benefit (JB)/Jobseekers Assistance (JA).

Furthermore, COVID-19 payments are currently viewed as short-term in nature, with an expectation that after 12 weeks, those in receipt of such payments may return to work or may be considered for JB/JA.

As it would not be statistically beneficial or valid to break the current Live Register series to try and capture these temporary measures, it has been decided to compile the March 2020 data in the traditional way and provide separate details of COVID-19 payments.

This approach preserves the continuity of the traditional Live Register series from what is a short-term emergency intervention while at the same time providing transparency around the impact of COVID-19 (see Information Note on Implications of COVID-19 on the Live Register and the Monthly Unemployment Estimates for more details)."

Commenting on today’s publication, Edel Flannery continued:

 “The unadjusted Live Register total for March 2020 is 205,209. When seasonal effects are taken into account, the seasonally adjusted Live Register total for March 2020 was 207,200 which was an increase of 24,400 from February 2020. 

Outside of the traditional Live Register, in the last week of March 2020, 283,037 people were in receipt of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment and 25,104 persons were benefitting from the Temporary COVID-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme.”

Note to Editors

Enquiries:

Catalina Gonzalez, Labour Market Analysis -  (+353) 87 646 7535

Email: labour@cso.ie

For further details:

Information Note on Implications of COVID-19 on the Live Register and the Monthly Unemployment Estimates

List of CSO Statistical Releases Affected by COVID-19

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