Ireland unemployment rate drops to decade low

DUBLIN, May 1 (Xinhua) -- Ireland's unemployment rate for April stood at 5.9 percent, a record low in almost a decade, according to the data released by the country's national statistics bureau CSO on Tuesday.

Commenting on the CSO figures, Alan McQuaid, an economist with a local economic research unit Merrion, said that the April jobless rate is the lowest ever recorded since May 2008 and the current unemployment rate of Ireland is much lower than the eurozone average of 8.5 percent.

The improvement of the country's unemployment rate reflected a strong labour market demand resulting from a consistent growth of the Irish economy over the last few years.

Last year the Irish economy posted another year of growth at a rate of 7.8 percent, the highest among the European Union member states, according to the CSO.

While the Irish government should be encouraged by what it has achieved in the employment field, it should not ignore the youth unemployment problem in the country, said MaQuaid.

The CSO figures showed that the April jobless rate of the Irish youth aged between 15 and 24 stood at 12 percent, a figure more than twice higher than the nation's average.

Alan McQuaid said that the unemployment rate in Ireland for 2018 is predicted at 5.7 percent, a decrease of one percentage point from last year's 6.7 percent.

Earlier last month the Irish Finance Ministry predicted that the Irish jobless rate will continue to drop in the next couple of years with the unemployment rates for 2018 and 2019 standing at 5.8 percent and 5.3 percent respectively. Enditem