Kenneth Fox
The total number of people on the Live Register or receiving the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) decreased by 5.7 per cent to 617,441 in March 2021.
The latest figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show that the unadjusted Live Register total stands at 183,096 for March 2021.
The CSO said in the final week of March 2021, 443,247 people were in receipt of the PUP. They said the number of people in receipt of the PUP is down 25,644 from last month and up 49,274 from a year ago.
In terms of the makeup of those in receipt of the PUP: 54.6 per cent were male, 70.9 per cent were Irish and almost a quarter were in each of the 25-34-year-old (22.1 per cent) and 35-44-year-old (22.7 per cent) age groups.
Commenting on today’s publication, Catalina Gonzalez, CSO statistician, said:
“The unadjusted Live Register total for March 2021 is 183,096. When seasonal effects are considered, the seasonally adjusted Live Register total for March 2021 was 186,300 which was a decrease of 2,700 from February 2021.
Full year of data
“Outside the traditional Live Register, in the last week of March 2021, 443,247 people were in receipt of the PUP."
The current release is the first time the CSO has been able to analyse a full year of the number of people in receipt of the PUP.
There are currently 49,274 more people in receipt of the PUP than at the end of March 2020.
The CSO said as Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) data has not been disseminated by the CSO yet, the total number of people that were on the Live Register or who benefited from the Covid-19 income supports (PUP or EWSS) in March 2021 is not available at this time.
Commenting further on aggregates of the Covid-19 income supports, Catalina Gonzalez continued:
“The Department of Social Protection (DSP) have supplied supplementary information on whether PUP recipients were in full-time education when asked to certify their status on the MyWelfare.ie service.
“While it should be noted that this information is not complete, it is estimated that at least 8.1 per cent of all recipients of PUP since March 2020 were attending full-time education at the time of certification.
“For those aged 25 years and over this could be as low as 1.3 per cent while it is at least 33.3 per cent for those aged under 25 years.”
