02 October 2020
Go to release: Live Register September 2020
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (02 October 2020) issued results from the Live Register in respect of September 2020. Today’s release also includes details regarding the COVID-19 income support schemes.
Catalina Gonzalez, CSO Statistician, explains the approach taken regarding the publication of today’s Live Register and COVID-19 income supports:
‘In the last week of September 2020, 217,142 of those whose income from employment has been affected due to COVID-19 benefitted from the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) which is administered by the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection (DEASP). The Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) has been replaced by the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) since the start of September 2020. Both the TWSS and EWSS schemes have been administered by the Revenue Commissioners who have provided TWSS data to the CSO for statistical purposes and dissemination to users. As the CSO do not have access yet to EWSS data, we are currently unable to provide estimates for the EWSS for September 2020. The CSO are continuing to work with the Revenue Commissioners to get access to the EWSS data and will commence providing aggregates of the numbers benefitting from the EWSS once the data is available.
The income support payments are not captured in the traditional methodology of the Live Register which is a historical series that includes the number of claimants for Jobseekers Benefit and Jobseekers Assistance (see Information Note on Implications of COVID-19 on the Live Register and the Monthly Unemployment Estimates for more details).
A review of non-recipient Live Register claims is ongoing at the DEASP and relates primarily to cases where a person who received a PUP has since closed their PUP claim and reported a return to employment. This will impact the Live Register totals, as some of these non-recipient jobseeker claims were included on the Live Register, but their jobseeker claims were not automatically closed at that time (see the Technical note published by the CSO to accompany the Live Register, August 2020 release for more information). The CSO has decided to compile the Live Register data for September 2020 in the traditional way and provide details of COVID-19 income support payments (see the Detailed COVID-19 Income Support and Live Register Tables) separately. An analysis of the Live Register total broken down by recipient and non-recipient claims is available in a new table in the Live Register release.
The CSO will continue to evaluate the available income support schemes and the results of the recipient and non-recipient analysis to determine whether any changes are required to the methodology for the Live Register to improve the usability of the series. Any changes the CSO may make to the methodology in the future will be clearly outlined to users in the statistical release and accompanying material.’
Commenting on today’s publication, Catalina Gonzalez continued:
‘The unadjusted Live Register total for September 2020 is 211,492. When seasonal effects are considered, the seasonally adjusted Live Register total for September 2020 was 215,400 which was an increase of 1,600 from August 2020.
Outside of the traditional Live Register, in the last week of September 2020, 217,142 people were in receipt of the PUP.
As EWSS data has not been received by the CSO yet, a total number of persons that were on the Live Register or who benefitted from the COVID-19 income supports (PUP or EWSS) in September 2020 is not available at this time.’
Commenting further on aggregates of the COVID-19 income supports, Catalina Gonzalez continued:
‘The CSO is working with and will continue to collaborate with both DEASP and the Revenue Commissioners to meet user needs for availability of detailed aggregates for the COVID-19 income supports.
Tables providing the breakdowns of the numbers receiving the PUP each week by sex, age group, county and nationality grouping are being made available today. (See Detailed COVID-19 Income Support and Live Register Tables).
Looking at this data, of the 217,142 persons in receipt of the PUP for the week ending 27 September 2020, 54.5% are male, 69.6% are Irish, and almost a quarter are in each of the 25-34-year-old (23.3%) and 35-44-year-old (22.4%) age groups. It can also be noted that 719,224 people have received at least one payment since the scheme was established in March 2020, of which 56.3% are male and 48.2% are aged between 25 and 44 years of age.’
Enquiries:
Catalina Gonzalez, Labour Market Analysis - 087-646 7535
Email: labour@cso.ie
For further details:
List of CSO Statistical Releases Affected by COVID-19
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