Jobs and Unemployment Watch - Unemployment 7.7 % and Rising - 450 headline losses today

Carol Coleman ? I agree it's six too many. Robert Shortt, the outgoing RTE correspondent, will soon be replaced by the soon-to-be inaugurated Charles Bird who has been getting his Office ready for the past three or more months ... so there's already two of them over there. Why couldn't they train Charlie here first? Maybe it's cheaper to have him live in a previously-owned Ninja mortgaged house in Chocolate City ?

Mark Little and his people - I understand what a cameraman does but what does a 'producer' do over there ? Couldn't Mark and his man 'produce' between them ?

Talking to someone else on the weekend... has two twentysomething 3rd level educated sons sitting at home on the dole.

very depressing. It'll take generation Y a decade to get over this.

expat girl wrote:

Talking to someone else on the weekend... has two twentysomething 3rd level educated sons sitting at home on the dole.

very depressing. It'll take generation Y a decade to get over this.

Or some very original idea or structure or something very disastrous perhaps. I'm not convinced we're united enough as a society to pull ourselves together - as far as I can see the big time looting is nearly over and the small time has only started.

We'll lumber on in Limbo for the next ten years. Feckin' great.

Auditor #9 wrote:

expat girl wrote:

Talking to someone else on the weekend... has two twentysomething 3rd level educated sons sitting at home on the dole.

very depressing. It'll take generation Y a decade to get over this.

Or some very original idea or structure or something very disastrous perhaps. I'm not convinced we're united enough as a society to pull ourselves together - as far as I can see the big time looting is nearly over and the small time has only started.

We'll lumber on in Limbo for the next ten years. Feckin' great.

Big time looting, that's what it was. That's as close a description as you'll get.

Hanafin says social welfare offices around country under "extreme pressure" with extra numbers signing on. Some people waiting up to 11 weeks to get JSB. Welfare staff 'working flat out'

Quote :

Welfare fraud crackdown saves €476m
A Government crackdown on social welfare fraud saved the State €476m last year.

Figures show that more than 560,000 claims were reviewed in 2008.

The Department of Social & Family Affairs says its campaign to eradicate fraud led to the savings of €476m, which is up €29m on the previous year.

Ireland employment at 300k now. The Pin on Irish Times --Link

Unemployment in Spain up to 13.9% in Q4 from 11.33% in Q3 --Link

According to the vlogger DEMCAD reading the US news, the States has lost 89,000 jobs - since Monday! One result of this is personal dignity goes out the window and sometimes there are unthinkable consequences as in the case of the Californian family suicides.

At Davos, there is a change in tone towards the European model of the Welfare State, according to the International Herald Tribune. Where there used to be scoffing there is now perhaps the question - could Europe's welfare state become a model for the 21st world of welfare?

Quote :

Is Europe's welfare system a model for the 21st century?

DAVOS, Switzerland: Along with skiing and partying into the night, Europe-bashing has long been a favorite sport when the world's business and political elite gather here for their once-a-year winter schmoozefest.

But this year, many of the critics have fallen conspicuously silent. As top executives, government leaders and a wide range of experts gathered Tuesday for the World Economic Forum to talk about the challenges facing the battered global economy, the question many were asking was this: Could the much-maligned social welfare system in Europe end up being the model for the 21st century?

In the United States, the global stock market rout has wiped out trillions of dollars in retirement savings, and rising unemployment is leaving more people without health insurance. In response, officials in the administration of President Barack Obama have been busy studying the Swedish bank bailout of the 1990s and the Swiss and Dutch health care systems. On the environmental front, the officials have been quietly contemplating whether Europe's high fuel taxes and carbon trading system are the right way to limit the burning of fossil fuels that contributes to global warming.

For China, where the demise of the American market has brought to light the perils of excessive savings at home, the government has not only recently proposed a big Keynesian-style stimulus program but has also just announced a three-year plan to provide universal health care. Though modest by comparison, China's health care plan goes in the direction of what has long been considered a fundamental right in Europe.
Read More >>>> International Herald Tribune

EvotingMachine0197 wrote:

Auditor #9 wrote:

expat girl wrote:

Talking to someone else on the weekend... has two twentysomething 3rd level educated sons sitting at home on the dole.

very depressing. It'll take generation Y a decade to get over this.

Or some very original idea or structure or something very disastrous perhaps. I'm not convinced we're united enough as a society to pull ourselves together - as far as I can see the big time looting is nearly over and the small time has only started.

We'll lumber on in Limbo for the next ten years. Feckin' great.

Big time looting, that's what it was. That's as close a description as you'll get.

Bank nationalisation and bailouts were big time looting, and god knows what is going out of the banks in terms of personal guarantees and other paperwork. The looting will only stop when we put our own people, who we can trust, in there to run the banks.

That will begin to happen. Most of the people who were appointed in the bank guarantee scheme were good people. I know one of them personally and he is most competent in that regard.

johnfás wrote:

That will begin to happen. Most of the people who were appointed in the bank guarantee scheme were good people. I know one of them personally and he is most competent in that regard.

Indeed. Furthermore, the property market will have to stabilise sometime. If many of the inflationary doomsters are right and quantitative easing causes inflationary problems, it is possible that marking to market in a few years time will not be as problematic as we think it will be.

This is possibly slim consolation, but there are a few things I am optimistic about. Most of all, after Deutsche, Commerz, ING, RBS, we know that our banks are not the only bottomless pits out there. Most of 'em are dead men walking. Since it is unlikely that Trichet, King et al will wake up in the morning and tell us all our financial system is dead in the water, some solution will have to be found. It will smack of creative accounting, no doubt, and will remind the more cynical of us of sticking plasters over gunshot wounds, but life will go on and something will have to be done. Since the Continent's problem is subprime, and maybe Alt-A etc mortgage bonds, I suspect the solution arrived upon will be quantitative easing of some sort; but it will likely involve the purchase of toxic debt by the central banks, as it becomes apparent that no matter how solvent the Government, the bank liabilities are larger. Finally, unlike the toxic mortgage securities, the debts here are often secured against real assets. As inflation reappears, it may magically begin to fill in some of the black holes.

I just hope for our own sake that we are not the first, or even the second, country that has to go looking for help. I am worried about the UK, not only do they have exposure to toxic mortgage bonds, they also had a property (but arguuably, not a construction) bubble. 3 beds in Hackney were going for 600K Stg when the average London salary was 1/15-1/20th of that. What does that tell you??

One of the UK Sundays did happen to mention Foxtons was in recievership, or administration or similar. There is some justice in this world after all (they were the most aggressive of the robber baron type estate agents over there, London based)

Ye spineless jellyfish are just where ye deserve. Hoping that Trichet will save ye're sorry arses.

This thing (modern capitalism) went in 2002, with the dot.com burst and since then, the biggest credit bubble ever has papered it over. I think it is limping along to default and collapse, whether in weeks, months or a couple of years I don't know. If they tape it up again by printing money, there will be an inflationary spiral on top of the damage of the deflation.

The main question now is what to replace it with.

Old Pat Kenny is not happy with being axed to lose a few shekels in the sake of the public interest. Pat's annual salary would pay 85 people on the dole.

Quote :

Kenny bites back over 'suspicious' pay cut motives



Pat Kenny today launched an attack on Fianna Fail over demands he take a pay cut from his RTE salary.

The broadcaster, who earns €850,000 a year, said he believed the motives of politicians in asking for the cuts were “not pure”.

“I’m suspicious of the motivation... I question the motivation. It’s shoot the messenger time, yet again,” Pat told the Herald today.

The Late Late Show host claims the large amount of tax he pays is “probably supporting several public servants in their jobs”.

Senior Fianna Fail sources are this evening outraged by Mr Kenny's comments, with one telling the Herald: “It is time for him to put up or shut up.”

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/kenny-bites-back-over-suspicious-pay-cut-motives-1619073.html

Eamon Dunphy has taken a pay cut it seems from this morning's news and yesterday in the Star there was a report of a FF senator saying the likes of Tubberty, Duffy and Gerry Ryan should take at least a 10% pay cut from their three, four, five hundred thousand salaries .. Too right.

Other news in the Herald - Is the number of people being made unemployed falling? Weren't there months before Christmas where 16,000 people were let go?

Eamon Gilmore is demanding the Figures ..

Quote :

Jobs crisis sees 5,000 out of work in a month

The unemployment crisis has seen the number of lay-offs break the 5,000 barrier this month alone – more than 170 jobs lost every day.

Worried Government officials expect the rate of redundancies to double this year, creating a massive dole bill of as much as €4.83bn.

Labour leader Eamon Gilmore has written to the Taoiseach asking for a full breakdown of the costs after being told the detail is not available.

After three days asking for the forecasts, Mr Gilmore said: “I cannot believe that this information is not available to the Government.

“While I accept that the Taoiseach may not have had the details to hand when I first asked for the figures on Tuesday, I cannot understand why the Government is still failing to make it available to the House. What is the Government seeking to hide?”

The Government and Central Bank differ slightly on their unemployment forecasts.

Department of Finance officials have revised their estimates predicting 120,000 job losses this year and |in 2010 and for overall unemployment to rise to more than 10pc. The |country could be looking at 420,000 people out of work by December.

But the Central Bank’s forecast is a more optimistic 9.4pc jobless rate for this year.

http://www.herald.ie/national-news/jobs-crisis-sees-5000-out-of-work-in-a-month-1620584.html

A doile queue

always feel a bit sorry for Tubbers, he does as much work as Kenny but earns about a quarter of his salary... he earns about half finucanes salary and she only works 2 days a week!

On East Coast FM this morning it was reported that there are 2,600+ signed on in Arklow. Nicky Kelly was interviewed and though it is hard to put exact numbers on it, the following appears to be the case.

Arklow has population of around 10k.
It's hinterland (who'd sign on in Arklow if they had to) has a further 5-10k.
That means 2,600 out of a population of 17,500 is on the dole in Arklow/South Wicklow.
That's 15% of the population on the dole.
That is well North of 20% (probably closer to 25%) of the workforce.
How much worse is this going to be a year down the road?
Declan Meehan sounded shocked.
I don't blame him.

I think the figures they are giving out are not including people on short time - three day weeks: that is a lot of people at the moment.

johnfás wrote:

always feel a bit sorry for Tubbers, he does as much work as Kenny but earns about a quarter of his salary... he earns about half finucanes salary and she only works 2 days a week!

Not sorry for any of them. There are people on the local stations just as good doing it for sensible/normal wages. They are all perfectly replaceable.

cactus flower wrote:

I think the figures they are giving out are not including people on short time - three day weeks: that is a lot of people at the moment.

Correct. In Arklow too, Nicky Kelly spoke of Australain Wakes every night of the week. They're not included either, though they will be when they get back.

cactus flower wrote:

johnfás wrote:

always feel a bit sorry for Tubbers, he does as much work as Kenny but earns about a quarter of his salary... he earns about half finucanes salary and she only works 2 days a week!

Not sorry for any of them. There are people on the local stations just as good doing it for sensible/normal wages. They are all perfectly replaceable.

But RTE suffers from the star mentality. The same people get the same gigs all the time. RTE think that we think they are superstars and that we'd be lost without them.

I feel sorry for tubbertty too - he only earns around 350k whereas marian finucane and Gerry Ryan between them get a million. Poor Ryan. AWW.

How the hell did RTE get themselves into such as idiotic cul-de-sac as to give a rake of radio broadcasters at least a third of a million each as an annual salary??? It's the researchers who do the work anyway - how much do they get?

Dunphy said he was happy to take the cut off his 300k pay - he said it had been negotiated in different times and now those times had changed. Or maybe he said "Gone Forever"??

Pat Kenny didn't say that yet.

Very sad to see this:

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mhsngbsngbey/

Workers in England and in the North on strike over the nationality of employees.

The Italian workers are in no way responsible for the economic crisis. Employees right across the world are in the same boat.

Would have nothing to do with Darling pulling out of Davos would it cactus? The UK did the same as us or we them during the BOOM! - they allowed wages to go cuckoo in comparison to EU averages I'd imagine and now they're getting their ****s squeezed on the rack just like us.

Quote :

Alistair Darling pulls out of Davos

Chancellor Alistair Darling has pulled out of attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos on the same day that the Bank of England and the Treasury launched a £50 billion asset buying scheme to help stabilise the British banking and boost the economy.

A spokeswoman for the Treasury confirmed that Mr Darling would not be going to the event, and had been due to fly to the WEF earlier this week. It also emerged today that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, has also pulled out of Davos.

Auditor #9 wrote:

Would have nothing to do with Darling pulling out of Davos would it cactus? The UK did the same as us or we them during the BOOM! - they allowed wages to go cuckoo in comparison to EU averages I'd imagine and now they're getting their ****s squeezed on the rack just like us.

Quote :

Alistair Darling pulls out of Davos

Chancellor Alistair Darling has pulled out of attending the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos on the same day that the Bank of England and the Treasury launched a £50 billion asset buying scheme to help stabilise the British banking and boost the economy.

A spokeswoman for the Treasury confirmed that Mr Darling would not be going to the event, and had been due to fly to the WEF earlier this week. It also emerged today that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, has also pulled out of Davos.

I think you're right, people are turning inward. A bad sign. We have more in common with the lads outside Parliament in Iceland and Bulgaria than with Darling or Dunne.

cactus flower wrote:

Very sad to see this:

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/mhsngbsngbey/

Workers in England and in the North on strike over the nationality of employees.

The Italian workers are in no way responsible for the economic crisis. Employees right across the world are in the same boat.

I summarised the C4 news coverage of this on the French strike thread. Looks like the dreaded BNP are trying to get max coverage... this one's only starting. The depth of feeling in the UK over immigration is at boiling point ("they're taking our dole"/"they're getting better services"...etc, you name it), and very often not for the right reasons. New Labour, in addition to supporting free movement of EU labour legally (with which I'd mostly agree), also turned a blind eye to massive illegal immigration and slave wages...this is now going to come up and bite them on the rear end big time. Yes, I know it goes on here too, but it's not on the same scale. Then, of course, the foreign policy not helping the situation, 7/7 happened. No one in the UK really knows who to blame, but there's huge debt and falling wages/layoffs....Hopefully, they should choose their system of governance, which is what I chose to blame when I lived there

I know you get the odd thread about anti-immigrant sentiment on P.ie, but thankfully it's not usually what the majority wants to discuss, and anyway, many here are now bemoaning the loss of our immigrants...more unoccupied housing means lower prices and lower rents... not good for the owners!! There's an undercurrent of general simmering anger over there, and unlike Ireland, where we all grumble about most things all the time, there's a national stoicism which can then be followed with little warning, by severe explosions. I never really understood that, meself.

They chose a different road with regard to wage inflation. Yes, their housing and costs rose rapidly for the last few years, just like ours. The UK government simply changed what it put in its basket of goods to calculate inflation, to keep it at 2-3%. For example, while we included housing costs in our RPIX figures, they removed theirs, and kept public wages fairly low. However, what they did do was massively expand the NUMBER of people employed by the Government, mostly in the form of oversight quangos that did no real oversight, and target managers that developed real expertise in massaging the figures to fit the targets. The NHS has one manager for every 5 beds. They kept the lid on building in Middle England, but did allow massive construction in areas such as the Welsh valleys that were already somewhat despoiled. Huge housing estates on top of old mineworkings and owners (including friends who've thankfully since moved) asked to sign all sorts of clauses of the "if you wake up in the morning and half your house has disappeared down a hole" when buying.

Anyway, to summarise, they have less of a developer in debt problem. They have far MORE exposure to huge and impossibly sophisticated banking problems. They have lower wages, but more people dependent on Govt coin. Furthermore, the response of the UK public to what would have been lower living standards after dot com bust and oil prices rises (given that wages didn't match inflation unless you were a banker, captain of industry or politician) was to borrow massively against housing.

And the banks there are not shy about repos. There are 200/100,000 as opposed to our 3/100,000

Swings and roundabouts, folks.....but on the whole, when really annoyed, the Brits do spectacular social unrest. We live in interesting times.

Quote :

Swings and roundabouts, folks.....but on the whole, when really annoyed, the Brits do spectacular social unrest. We live in interesting times.

Oh yeah? Are there any more kings to behead over there ??

It sounds like you might be expecting a lot of violent racist-based unrest. What do you see happening? Electricity and food shortages?

well, they've just started striking in the middle of the energy/transport infrastructure... guaranteed to bring Gord to heel or lecky and food shortages, yes. Race riots are a given... they happened during the boom occasionally. Might be more suicide bombings as the Muslims decide they're not happy with the worst of the racism.....lots of people quoting Enoch, and a sharp rise in overt support for the BNP.