Ireland March unemployment rate stands at 6.1 pct

DUBLIN, April 4 (Xinhua) -- The unemployment rate of Ireland in March stood at 6.1 percent, said the country's national statistics bureau on Wednesday.

The figure represented a 0.9-percentage-point drop compared with the 7 percent jobless rate recorded in the country in the same month of last year, said Central Statistics Office (CSO) in a press release on its website.

A total of 144,400 persons were unemployed in Ireland in March, 19,100 less than that recorded in the same period last year, said CSO, adding that the unemployed included 83,100 males and 61,300 females.

The jobless rate in Ireland is 2.4 percentage points lower than the 8.5 percent unemployment rate just announced for the euro zone.

Ireland's lower unemployment rate is mainly due to its rapidly growing economy. Last year Ireland's economic growth rate reached 7.3 percent, the highest among the 28 European Union member states.

Local economists pointed out that the current youth unemployment rate in Ireland is still very high and the Irish government should address this problem seriously.

According to the CSO statistics, the jobless rate for the Irish people aged at 15-24 years stood at 12.5 percent in March, twice higher than that of the national average. Enditem