home » our ideas » full policy listing

Just the job

Issued : Monday 6 April, 2009

More than 173,000 people have signed on the live register over the past 12 months, signalling the fastest rise in unemployment since records began. It is estimated that as many as half a million people could be out of work by the end of 2009.

Unemployment is a crisis for individuals and households, particularly in light of high levels of personal debt accumulated over the housing boom. But high unemployment also places a major burden on the public finances. For every person made unemployed, the Exchequer loses at least €20,000 a year in social welfare payments and tax forgone. Over half of the Government's €2 billion worth of cuts and levies in January was immediately absorbed by the €1.2 billion cost of 63,000 additional people on the live register in January and February alone.

As long as people are losing their jobs, the Government will have to keep cutting expenditure to pay for them, which in turn depresses the economy. This is why getting people back to work is the cornerstone of Labour's strategy for economic recovery.

Labour's jobs strategy is two-pronged: stimulate job creation in the short term, and create the conditions for new, sustainable job creation in the medium to long-term by up-skilling our workforce.

We cannot afford to be blinkered by our current economic difficulties. Investing now in the skills of those who find themselves unemployed, or under-employed, is an investment in the longer term health of our economy. We need to position ourselves to take advantage of the global upswing, and subsequent growth in the trend for skilled, knowledge-intensive jobs. If we don't, we could find ourselves lagging behind for years to come.

The ten ideas in this document are creative responses to the unemployment crisis we face now, and the need to be ready for the employment opportunities that will come with a global recovery. Many of our proposals pay for themselves, and cost less per person than the €20,000 annual cost of unemployment.

The extra costs associated with our ideas have been accounted for in The Labour Party's priorities for the 2009 Emergency Budget. Ours is a plan for economic recovery, not panic measures. For economic recovery to be sustainable, we need to invest in our most valuable natural resource: a skilled population.