Notes on the Front

Apologies for being away so long – workload and such.Will be attempting to provide some insight into the issues facing us (IMF receivership, the apocalypse) in more bite-sized contributions. That’s the plan, anyway. Let’s see how it goes.

Batt O’Keefe has made a name for himself, launching documents predicting thousands, even hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next four years (IDA, Enterprise Ireland, Innovation, Employers’ PRSI exemption). Now he has a new one.

In the last budget, the Government projected that employment would grow by about 20,000 next year and 150,000 by 2014. In their new Economic and Budgetary Outlook, the Government now projects that employment will fall by 5,000, and will only grow by approximately 75,000 by 2014. That’s 75,000 less jobs than previously estimated.

Surely that would play havoc with our unemployment rate but no. The Government is projecting almost no change in the Live Register (only rising by 0.25 percent). How’s that?

Well, a lot of people could be returning to education. A lot could just give up and drop out of the labour force. Still others could be booted off the Live Register through ‘administrative’ measures (e.g. tightening up eligibility for benefit and means-tested programmes). But the Government gives us the main reason:

‘Net outward migration will restrain the pace of growth in labour supply, which combined with the increase in net employment will reduce unemployment to under 10% by the end of the forecast horizon.’

That is, emigration.

So the new employment policy is to hope that more and more go to other countries to find a job.

I predict this policy will be more successful than Batt’s previous efforts.