POSITIVE EMPLOYMENT FIGURES WELCOMED

SIR Reg Empey, The Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Investment, has welcomed the publishing of figures indicating record employment in the province.

Welcoming the latest figures, Sir Reg Empey said: "I am pleased to say that overall the figures indicate generally a positive picture of the Northern Ireland economy, with falling unemployment, the highest March jobs figure on record and significant growth in sales.

"There are now 46,000 people unemployed, or 6.2 per cent, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO) definition. This is a fall of 5,000 on the total seasonally adjusted rate recorded for the same period last year and a fall of 1,000 since the last quarter, November 2000 to January 2001.

However, long-term unemployment in the province is showing an upward trend. Compared with the same period last year, there has been an increase of 1,000 in the long-term unemployment figures, bringing the total of people out of work for one year or more, to 20,000.

Sir Reg said: "Despite the number of job losses announced across Northern Ireland, the Quarterly Employment Survey (QES) which measures the number of employee jobs, shows that, in March, there were 644,110 people in work. Realistically however, this must be balanced against over 2,500 redundancies which are still in the pipeline.”

There was no change in the seasonally adjusted number of claimants for Jobseekers Allowance (JSA) between April and May 2000, although over the year there was a fall of 2,500, reducing the total of JSA claimants to 40,000 which is 5.1 pre cent of the workforce. (SP)