A further 1,900 people came off the Live Register last month, a reflection of the tightening labour market, figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show. The CSO said seasonally adjusted Live Register total for September was 184,100, down 1 per cent from the previous month.
The number of people receiving benefits has fallen sharply since the removal of Covid-19 restrictions and the ending of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) in March this year.
In March, 436,056 people were on the Live Register or were benefiting from the PUP or the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme. This was down from a pandemic high of just under 1.2 million in April 2020.
The Live Register is not a measure of unemployment as people with part-time work can be entitled to benefits, but it does broadly track improvements in the labour market.
Separate figures from the CSO show manufacturing output rose by 8.1 per cent in the three months from June to August, compared with the previous three-month period.
The manufacturing sector in Ireland is dominated by pharmaceutical firms, which have continued to trade strongly despite the deteriorating international outlook.
From June to August 2022, production in the traditional sector was 12.6 per cent greater than in the corresponding period of 2021.
