Certain Aspects of Non-Agricultural Unemployment in Ireland. General Research Series Paper No. 52, January 1970

Geary, R. C. and Hughes, J. G. (1970) Certain Aspects of Non-Agricultural Unemployment in Ireland. General Research Series Paper No. 52, January 1970. UNSPECIFIED.

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Abstract

In Ireland less attention is paid to the chronically high Irish unemployment rate than the gravity of the problem merits. Indeed, the reason it is more or less tacitly tolerated may be its permanent character. Also, unemployment has declined considerably over the years. At the Census of Population (CP) of April 1936 those out of work numbered 95,000; in April 1966 the number was 52,000 in a labour force which, comparatively, did not change much. As regards non-agricultural unemployment (NAU), with which we are solely concerned here, numbers declined in the 30 years from 69,000 to 42,000. Since the non-agricultural employee labour force (employed and unemployed) greatly increased, the decline in rates (i.e. out of work as percentage of employee labour force) is even more striking: from 12.2 per cent to 6.3 per cent. In the next section we shall find that the decline in rates was also very marked in the post-war II period. No doubt the fact of the decline, as well as the efforts (largely successful in the economic sense)being made to develop industry (and incidentally1 to create new jobs) has done much to assuage the public conscience. We shall see, however, that in Irish conditions, there is no necessary connection between increased employment and decline in unemployment at rates of expansion of the economy prevailing in recent years and we shall show why. As a consequence, it would appear that, to cope with the problem of high unemployment, more must be done than expanding the economy. Unemployment must be regarded as a specific social problem, almost as if it were isolated from economic development. Employment and unemployment are not one problem but two.

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