Unemployment in Galway has fallen to its lowest level in almost eight years, according to the last statistics.
A further drop of more than 2,000 people on the Live Register compared to this time last year means the total number ‘signing on’ at the end of April has fallen by 11.7% throughout Galway.
There are now 15,246 people on the Register in Galway, according to the figures from the Central Statistics Office.
That’s the lowest total in almost eight years, since August 2008 — and represents a reduction of more than 10,000 in Galway people on the Dole at the height of the economic collapse, in August 2010.
Rural areas of the county have been the main beneficiaries of the latest drop in unemployment, according to the CSO.
The biggest year-on-year fall at the end of April was in the Loughrea social welfare district, where numbers on the Live Register fell by almost 17%, a drop of 306 to 1,512.
Tuam numbers fell by almost 15%, down 391 to 2,232; Clifden was down 13%, a reduction of 125 to 832; Ballinasloe fell by 12.5%, down 253 to 1,774; in Galway City there was an almost 10% drop, down 847 to 7,837; and the smallest reduction in Live Register numbers was in the Gort social welfare district, where a fall of 93 in the numbers ‘signing on’, to 1,059, represented an 8% drop.
All areas showed a reduction over the previous month’s figures, with the exception of Gort, where there was an increase of 26 over March — the Galway total was down 463 on the month, a reduction of almost 3%.
There continues to be a substantial gap, however, between different age groups in the extent of how much their employment prospects have recovered.
The biggest contrast is between the figures for women under 25 and women aged 25 and over in Galway.
The April returns show that among younger women, the numbers on the Live Register fell by 26.6%, while among the older cohort, the reduction was a far more modest 8.3%.
Younger men also saw a bigger drop in their numbers on the Register (down 20.2%) compared with men aged 25 and over (down 11.4%).
Nationally, the number of people on the Live Register at the end of April was 305,785, down by almost 38,000, or 11%, on this time last year.
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