Forty people lost their jobs at Flynns Fine Foods Factory in Roslea
FERMANAGH’S out of work figure for last month, at 4.7 per cent of the working population, is below the Northern Ireland average of 6.9 per cent for the quarter, May to July.
And, it compares favourably with the out of work rate for the south of 13.5 per cent
That is the positive side for Fermanagh which, just recently, saw 40 employees laid off with the closure of the Flynn Fine Foods plant in Roslea.
Analysts note, however, that the county’s high rate of emigration – which is hard to document – could partly explain the fall in unemployment.
There were, in all, 118 confirmed redundancies notified to the Department of Enterprise Trade and Investment (DETI) last month, compared to 145 in July, and 186 in August last year.
A DETI spokesman said this represented a 40% increase in the number of confirmed redundancies over the last year to 31 August last, 3,083 compared to 2,209 in the previous year.
“There were 41 proposed redundancies notified during the period mid -August 2013 to mid -September 2013. This takes the total of proposed redundancies to 1,416 since the start of the year to mid August.”
However, he cautioned that all proposed redundancies do not actually take place.
Asked if the 41 notified redundancies referred to above related to Flynns, he told the Herald that redundancies’ information was confidential.
Employees at the Roslea plant claim they were only formally notified (by the receivers) their jobs were gone on 5th September.
The out of work rate for Northern Ireland (6.9 per cent), is below the UK average rate (7.7%) and lower than that for the European Union (10.9%).
The figures also indicate some growth in the last five quarters, with almost half of the increase
occurring between April and June this year.
Those three months reflected increases in the services’ sector (+2,190 jobs) and the manufacturing sector.
And, while there was a decrease in the construction sector (-240 jobs), the public sector jobs increased by 460 while the private sector jobs also experienced an increase of 2,530 jobs) over the same period.
On the minus side, the Northern Ireland claimant count rate (6.9%) for last month was the highest among the 12 UK regions (the UK rate was 4.2%).
This is now the 41st consecutive month that Northern Ireland has had the highest or second highest UK regional unemployment rate, using this measurement.
Over the year, the Northern Ireland claimant count has decreased by 1.7% (1,100), compared to a decrease of 10.7% in the UK. The annual decrease in Northern Ireland was the lowest of the 12 UK regions.
Commenting on the figures, Enterprise Minister Arlene Foster welcomed the decrease in the North’s unemployment rate to below that of the UK (7.7%).
She commented: “The more recent unemployment benefit figures for August continue to show encouraging signs as this is the seventh consecutive month in which there has been a fall in this measure of unemployment.”
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