Vol. 441 No. 6
7 Mr. J. O'Keeffe asked the Taoiseach the total increase in the number of people registered as unemployed at employment exchanges throughout the country from March 1987 to March 1994; and if he will make a statement on the matter.
The total number of persons on the live register increased from 249,372 in March 1987 to 290,590 in March 1994, an increase of 41,218 persons.
The live register consists essentially of persons who are eligible to claim unemployment benefit, to apply for unemployment assistance or to claim credited Social Welfare contributions. The definitions of eligibility are based on administrative rather than statistical criteria. Hence, the live register total is not an objective measure of the absolute level of unemployment.
The definitive source of statistics on employment and unemployment is the annual Labour Force Survey — LFS. The live register is useful only as a trend indicator of short term sub-annual changes in "unemployment" pending the availability of the results of the following Labour Force Survey.
