Northern Ireland is seeing record levels of unemployment and the problem is set to get much worse. Since 2007 unemployment has increased in the North by a staggering 157%, almost twice the British rate of increase and the highest level in the North since 1997. Almost all economists accept that this level will substantially inflate, with some predicting that unemployment levels could go beyond the 100,000 mark, figures not seen since the 1980's.

Labour’s Joan Burton wants to whip the unemployed into shape. She’s determined to make sure that “welfare should not be considered a lifetime option”. She wants to give an ‘incentive’ to the 450,000 people in this country who she believes suddenly decided that it was.

Government plan to conscript unemployed for €20 extra a week.

A new scheme to conscript 5,000 unemployed people to undertake community service will be rolled out from January 2011.

The Fianna Fail Green Government has recently announced it’s ‘Work for Dole’ scheme- which they say will take up to 10,000 people off the Live Register and get them working in the community for 19 hours a week. The participants will receive 210 euro a week. The Government says that it wants to put up to 40,000 onto this scheme once the initial phase is proven a success. ICTU have already made clear the trade union’s opposition to the proposed compulsory nature of the scheme.

The Fianna Fail Green government will try to use any means possible to disguise the true state of the economy- whether that’s by using GDP (gross domestic product) based calculations (which includes corporate profits of multinationals based here who repatriate those funds!) instead of the more realistic GNP (gross national product) –or by manipulating the unemployment figures so that the disastrous collapse of the job’s situation remains obscured.

By Kevin Wingfield

As the country goes to the polls, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has
just published figures showing unemployment has doubled in the last year and
now stands at 402,100.

At this rate joblessness in the South could top an unprecedented half a
million by year's end.