The seasonally adjusted Live Register total for May 2023 was 182,000 persons, up by 800 or 0.4% from April 2023.
The unadjusted Live Register total stood at 176,999 persons for May 2023.
Of the 176,999 persons on the unadjusted Live Register in May 2023, 53.6% were male and 69.2% were Irish.
The 35-44 age group made up the largest number of those on the Live Register in May 2023 at 41,985 persons or 23.7%.
People arriving in Ireland from Ukraine under the EU's Temporary Protection Directive (TPD) can access a wide range of Department of Social Protection (DSP) supports. The majority of new applications for income support from people of working age are being processed as Jobseeker's Allowance (JA) claims until the most appropriate income support for that person is identified. This facilitates access to existing part-time work supports where appropriate. If a person is on JA for 20* claim paid days or more, they are counted on the Live Register.
*Before October 2022, persons availing of TPD were included in the Live Register when they had been in receipt of JA for 50 days or more.
Data in this release are subject to revision based on updates to the seasonally adjusted series whenever new monthly data are added, such revisions are typically very minor in scale. It should be noted that larger revisions can occur when the comprehensive annual review of the seasonal adjustment model is carried out in January of each year. See background notes for further details.
| Total Persons on the Live Register - Unadjusted and Seasonally Adjusted | ||
| Live Register Total | Seasonally Adjusted | |
| May 2022 | 171,903 | 176,900 |
| April 2023 | 179,001 | 181,200 |
| May 2023 | 176,999 | 182,000 |
| Change in month | - | 800 |
| Change in year | 5,096 | - |
https://data.cso.ie/table/LRM15
*The Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) scheme ended in March 2022; final payments issued were in respect of the week ending Friday 25 March 2022. All PUP recipients at that stage either transferred to a jobseeker’s scheme or had their PUP claim closed, either because they did not apply for a jobseeker’s payment or they did not have an entitlement e.g. they were in receipt of another scheme payment or were pending a decision on their jobseeker claim.
The cessation of the PUP scheme particularly impacts the year-on year changes in Jobseeker’s Benefit claims with the number of recipients decreasing by 30.9% (-15,634) in May 2023 compared with 12 months earlier.
Data up to the end of April 2023 on the number of persons availing of a range of programmes targeted primarily at the long-term unemployed (over 12 months) and other welfare recipients is provided in the Annex Table A1 – Number of persons availing of Activation Programmes table.
Persons on activation programmes are not counted as part of the monthly Live Register.
Detailed tables relating to the monthly estimates of the number of persons on Live Register classified by NUTS2 and NUTS3 regions are included in the CSO Main Data Dissemination Service LRM17 on PxStat.
Table LRM13 on PxStat includes the Live Register occupational data which is sourced from information collected by the DSP on the most recent occupation of claimants when they sign on the Live Register.
Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (02 June 2023) issued results from the Live Register for May 2023.
Commenting on today’s publication, Conor Delves, Statistician in the Labour Market Analysis Section, said:
“The unadjusted Live Register total for May 2023 was 176,999. When seasonal effects are considered, the seasonally adjusted Live Register total for May 2023 was 182,000, an increase of 800 persons from April 2023.
There were 22,810 people benefitting from the EU's Temporary Protection Directive included in the Live Register figures for May 2023, a decrease of 283 from April 2023.
The counties that saw the largest percentage increase in the number of people on the Live Register in the 12 months to May 2023 were Kerry (29.5%) and Leitrim (29.5%).
The number of persons on the Live Register for one year or more in May 2023 was 63,268, down 2,410 from a year earlier. There were 113,731 persons (64.3%) on the Live Register for less than one year.“