Official figures show that the unemployment rate in the final three months of last year moved up to 13.1%, compared with 12.5% in the previous quarter.
The Central Statistics Office figures also show a sharp rise in long-term unemployment - people out of work for more than a year.
The CSO's quarterly national household survey said just under 1.9 million people were in work in the final quarter of last year, a fall of 166,900 or just over 8% compared with a year earlier.
Read the CSO figures in full here
The biggest fall again came in the construction sector, where the numbers employed fell by almost 80,000, or 36.8%, over the year. There was a fall of almost 30,000 (10.8%) in the number working in industry.
The number of people unemployed in the final quarter of last year was 267,400, up 97,700 (56.6%) from a year earlier. The number of unemployed men rose by 61.5%, while the rise for women was 49%.
Long-term jobless now a third of total
The CSO said more than half of the annual increase was in long-term unemployment, bringing the number of people under this heading to 89,100. The long-term unemployed now make up one-third of total unemployment, compared with just over a fifth a year earlier.
Though the headline jobless figure fell by 12,400 from the previous quarter, it was up 10,000 when seasonal factors were taken into account.
The CSO's quarterly national household survey also shows that the number of people in the labour force continued to fall - down 3% over the year.
The number of non-Irish people in the labour force fell by 33,600 or 10% over the year, compared with a fall of 1.9% for Irish people. 255,200 non-Irish people were in work, while 47,900 were unemployed.
