Liveregisterin Corkatitslowest foradecade

FIGURES for May released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) have revealed that the combined total number of people signing the live register across Cork County had dropped below 20,000 for the first time in a decade.

The report revealed that the number of people ‘signing on’ at social welfare offices across the county during May stood at 19,704. The last time the figure dropped below 20,000 was in 2008, when the total stood at 19,552.

The steady decline in the number of people on the register was mirrored across north and midCork, with the combined May figure for the social welfare offices in Mallow, Fermoy, Newmarket and Macroom standing at 3,871. This is the first time that the figure has dropped below 4,000 since 2008, when it stood at 3,632.

However, within just 12-months the 2008 figure had jumped to 7,901, a reflection of the seismic changes the wider Irish economy underwent following the collapse of the so-called ‘Celtic Tiger’.

These reverberations continued to be felt across the region into 2010, when the combined total of the four offices in May of that year stood at a high of 9,340.

Over the ensuing year the first feeble shoots of recovery were felt, with the number of people on the register at the end of May 2011 dropping slightly to 8,921.

Since then the figure for the month of May for the four offices has continued to drop with each passing year, dropping below the 8,000 mark in 2014 and 6,000 in 2016, with the figure for May 2017 standing at 4,545.

As of the end of May this year the live register for Mallow stood at 1,251, Fermoy 1,112, Newmarket 728 and Macroom 780.

This represents an overall reduction across the four offices of just over 51 per cent from the peak figure in 2010.