News & Events

Bruton welcomes continuing fall in numbers of people unemployed

Figures highlight scale of challenge still ahead

The Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, Richard Bruton TD today (Wednesday) welcomed the publication of the latest official unemployment figures, showing a continuing decline in the number of people out of work.

Significant progress has been made in reducing the numbers of people unemployed from well over 300,000 people in the first quarter of 2012 when the Action Plan for Jobs was launched to 209,700 today. However the Minister cautioned that there is still a long way to go before full employment is achieved, and major challenges must be overcome in order to sustain the rate of job-creation and unemployment-reduction that we have seen up to this point.

Minister Bruton said: “Every job created is a life back on track and an extra wage packet coming into a community. And it is job-creation that supports the increased revenue we need to cut income taxes and improve public services across the country. That is why we have put job-creation at the centre of our plan since we first took office.

“Today’s figures show that the trends which have been evident for some time are continuing, with the number of people unemployed continuing to fall. However the scale of the challenge ahead of us remains huge.

“We have set the ambition of delivering sustainable full employment by 2018 and I am confident that we can hit that target. However it will not happen automatically, and will require continuing strong implementation of our plan –better supports for enterprise, further targeting of growth sectors and further improvements in productivity and competitiveness”.

ENDS

For further information contact:

Press Office, Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Employment Ph 6312200 or press.office@djei.ie