THE DECLINE in the jobs market may be slowing, according to State employment agency Fás, which said yesterday that the number of job advertised in the Republic was down 52 per cent in the first half of the year.

Fás said the fall in demand for workers occurred across all businesses, but was particularly marked for skilled building workers, where there was a 73 per cent decline in advertisements.

Demand was down 66 per cent for clerical workers and 67 per cent for transport staff, while vacancies for IT-related jobs halved.

“However, the rate of decline in vacancies slowed dramatically in quarter two and was down only 1 per cent on quarter one,” the agency said in a statement.

“While some of this can be attributed to seasonal factors, it does give further credence to views that the second quarter of 2009 marked a deceleration in the decline of the labour market.”

The agency’s chief economist, Brian McCormick, agreed that both Live Register and vacancy trends suggest that the decline in the labour market is becoming less severe.

“However, redundancy figures for the period show no let up in the rate of lay-offs,” he said.

“In reality it is too early to form a clear picture of what is happening to the underlying trend in unemployment, although it seems inevitable that the trend will continue to be upward in the short term given the current poor economic outlook.”

Fás also said that a marked slowdown in the number of EU accession-state nationals signing on helped to contribute to a slowdown in the rate of people joining the dole queues.

The Live Register increased by 40,000 in the second quarter of the year, compared with twice that figure in the previous three months.

The rise in unemployment is hitting men hardest, and there are more than twice the number of men compared to women on the Live Register.