Over 16,000 Now Claiming Unemployment Supports In Clare

Photo © Clare FM

The number of people in Clare dependent on the State for their income jumped by 450 to over 16,000 in February.

That’s despite a small fall in the live register numbers last month.

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The monthly live register release from the CSO shows 4,896 people claiming some form of unemployment benefit at the end of February, but this doesn’t include the pandemic unemployment payment.

In terms of the live reg itself, the figure represents a monthly fall of 36, with much of this accounted for Ennis.

In the county town, dole queues dropped by 31, while they were down by 11 in north Clare and by three in the West of the County.

The live register increased by 9 in East Clare.

However, this only tells part of the story, and doesn’t take into account the 11,200 people in Clare who are reliant on the PUP for income.

That number grew from 10,500 at the end of January, but the weekly releases since then show that it did hit higher levels before easing somewhat in February.

It does mean, however, that according to these latest sets of government statistics, 16,081 people are either on the live register, or claiming the P.U.P, setting out the stark economic impact of the COVID crisis.

At the height of the last economic crash, that figure never topped 11,000.