Written answers

Tuesday, 26 March 2019

Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation

Job Creation Targets

Photo of Billy KelleherBilly Kelleher (Cork North Central, Fianna Fail)
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590. To ask the Minister for Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation the regional job targets and unemployment rate projections under A Programme for A Partnership Government for 2020 and Enterprise 2025, by year and region; the latest figures relating to these targets; the monitoring and reporting mechanisms in place; and her job targets up to 2020 by region, in tabular form. [12751/19]

Photo of Heather HumphreysHeather Humphreys (Cavan-Monaghan, Fine Gael)
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In the Programme for Partnership Government, agreed in early 2016, the Government set the target of an additional 200,000 new jobs to be created by 2020 with 135,000 of these for people located outside of Dublin. The recently launched Regional Enterprise Plans to 2020, which succeed the previous Regional Action Plans for Jobs 2015-2017/8, are a central pillar of the Government’s ambition to meet this target.

The key objective under the Regional Enterprise Plans is to have a further 10 to 15 per cent at work in each region by 2020, with the aim of having the unemployment rate of each region reduced (and maintained) to not more than one percentage point above the State average. Enterprise 2025 Renewed, reflects the same ambition in relation to regional unemployment.

There has been strong progress to date in delivering to the Programme for Government targets. According to the most recent CSO quarterly Labour Force Survey (seasonally unadjusted at regional level), the national employment target for 2020 has already been exceeded, with 2,281,300 in employment as of Q4 2018 (see Table 1). With nearly 133,000 jobs created outside Dublin since Q1 2016, the Government is well positioned to meet the regional employment growth target by the end of 2020.

Unemployment rates have declined significantly in all of the eight regions in the period Q1 2016 to Q4 2018. Table 2 contains unemployment rates by region and their relativity to the State average as of Q4 2018. Only two regions out of the eight currently have an unemployment rate over 1 percentage point above the State average.

The recently launched Regional Enterprise Plans set out a focused agenda to 2020 for each of the regions, complementing the core activities of the enterprise agencies and the LEOs, and also national level policy initiatives such as Future Jobs Ireland 2019. As part of the new Plans, Regional Steering Committees chaired by a representative from private industry will drive their delivery and provide formal Progress Reports to my Department at the end of 2019 and 2020.

Several funding streams being made available such as the Regional Enterprise Development Fund administered by Enterprise Ireland and those under Project Ireland 2040 including the Urban and the Rural Regeneration and Development Funds are important elements in driving further progress on employment growth in regional and rural Ireland.

Table 1: Progress against Programme for Government targets (000’s) based on data from Q1 2016 to Q4 2018.All figures presented are based on seasonally unadjusted data

Achieved to Q4 2018Achieved to Q4 2018
Target

‘000
Employment Q1 2016

‘000
Employment to Q4 2018

‘000
Number

‘000
% of target
New jobs by 2020200.82,080.82,281.3+200.5100.2
Jobs outside of Dublin by 2020135.01,447.01579.9+132.998.4
Source: CSO Labour Force Survey

Table 2: ILO Unemployment Rate by Region, the Changes from Q1 2016 to Q4 2018 (% Points), and the difference from the State Average.All figures presented are based on seasonally unadjusted data

Please note: While this table presents the state unemployment rate for Q4 2018 as 5.4%, this figure is seasonally unadjusted and should be considered only within the context of regional progress. The seasonally adjusted national unemployment rate for Q4 2018 is 5.7%.

Annual change Q1 2016 to Q4 2018Difference from State Q4 2018
Region*Q1 2016Q4 2018(% Points)(% Points)
Border7.4%3.8%-3.6%-1.6%
Midland13.7%6.6%-7.1%1.2%
West10.9%5.8%-5.1%0.4%
Dublin7.1%5.0%-2.1%-0.4%
Mid-East7.7%4.9%-2.8%-0.5%
Mid-West10.7%5.6%-5.1%0.2%
South-East10.7%7.7%-3.0%2.3%
South-West8.4%5.3%-3.1%-0.1%
State8.8%5.4%-3.4%-
Outside Dublin9.4%5.4%-4.0%0.0%
Source: CSO Labour Force Survey

*Due to regulation changes, the ‘NUTS3’ regional groupings (used by the CSO to compose regional employment data) have changed. Under the new groupings, County Louth has moved from the Border to the Mid-East region and what was formerly South Tipperary has moved from the South-East to the Mid-West Region. From Q1 2018, CSO Labour Force Survey data has been updated to take account of these changes.

1All figures presented are based on seasonally unadjusted data

2All figures presented are based on seasonally unadjusted data

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