CASUAL AND PART-TIME WORKERS ON THE LIVE REGISTER, MAY 2002 - JULY 2010
Aug 7th, 2010 by Conor McCabe
Just to follow on from yesterday’s short post, again the same trend of a stall in part-time and casual work levels around the end of last year, the first plateau since the current economic crisis really took off.
Again, a tentative conclusion, but one of the employment trends which was keeping people in work - the move from full-time to part-time hours, and casual days instead of a structured week - has now reached a stalling-point.
A survival tactic by businesses, one which kicked in at the start of 2008, has run out of steam.
I suppose you can’t do a graph of corporate profits (or tax-based transfers, I suppose, for some companies here) to go with that?
Anticap doesn’t go as far as a graph, but he does pull a quote from the NYT’s wire service on what’s happening in the USA:
I could but I’m not too sure it would be that helpful, as the majority of Irish people don’t work for those type of corporations. Foreign Direct Investment dominates industry and exports but not employment.
Sorry tombuku, I should say that I think it would be worth highlighting corporate profits and tax-take - I’m just talking about in relation to part-time/casual employment, that’s all.
Very helpful analysis Conor. Can we expect another round of mass lay offs then, at least silently done because many of these will be of these part-time and casual layoffs?
I’m not too sure Eoin. Still trying to work this through, but I think what is going on is that in more recent times - let’s say 2002 to 2007 - the people who made up the 4% who were singing on were not the same 4% who were signing on a year later. However, now, the people who were signing on a year ago are still signing today. That’s the worrying part. We’re into a new phase with regard unemployment
There was a turnover in the live register, it was quite dynamic even though it appeared static. The reason why it appeared static is because of the employment opportunities in the economy, and that is one aspect that has changed.
There’s a downturn in the number of part-time workers, but there’s no increase in full employment, so it’s a double whammy: part-time work is falling, and long-term unemployment is increasing.
But, part-time work is falling and unemployment increasing because of the increase in businesses shutting-down, whereas before the move by businesses to cut hours, not people, was acting as a brake on the unemployment figures - and I know it seems funny to talk about a brake on unemployment when we were already at 13.5% but that’s why it is worrying. It’s set to increase, and it is not going to drop for a long time yet, because now the businesses that were hanging on and employing people part-time in hope of an upturn, well, Fianna Fail and the Greens have just killed them.