Data in respect of the enterprise development agencies IDA Ireland, Enterprise Ireland, Udarás na Gaeltachta and the county enterprise boards show that, in the period 1996 to 2000, 9,456 full-time and part-time jobs were created in the north-west region comprising counties Donegal, Leitrim and Sligo. Job losses in agency-supported firms over the same period totalled 8,404 while the latter figure does not include job losses in county enterprise board firms, the extent of such losses is not significant. The downsizing of the Fruit of the Loom operations in County Donegal has had a significant negative impact on the figures for the region in this period.
However, these figures alone do not reveal the full employment picture. The CSO labour force survey and quarterly national household survey shows that total numbers at work in the Border midlands and west – BMW – region increased from 351,000 in April 1997 to 424,000 in November 2000, an increase of more than 20%. During the same period, the unemployment rate in the BMW region fell from 10.5% to 4.8%.