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Unemployment rate hits 28% amid COVID-19

Unemployment rate hits 28% amid COVID-19

Ireland's unemployment rate hit 28.2% in April when accounting for all COVID-19 payments.

According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO) the standard rate would be 5.4%.

The CSO said the figures demonstrate the pandemic has continued to have "a significant impact on the labour market during April."

In the last week of April, 602,107 people were in receipt of the Pandemic Unemployment Payment.

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425,204 people were benefitting from the Temporary COVID-19 Wage Subsidy Scheme.

Separately, the regular unemployment figure for April 2020 is 216,900, an increase of 7,500 from March.

Edel Flannery, a senior CSO statistician said the approach taken toward the figures differentiates between regular unemployment statistics and the Covid-19 payments.

She said: "As it would not be statistically beneficial or valid to break the current Live Register series to try and capture these temporary measures, it has been decided to compile the Live Register data for April 2020 in the traditional way and provide separate details of COVID-19 payments."

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