Official figures also show that the number of people working in the economy in the second quarter fell by more than 8% from a year earlier.
Read the CSO report
The Central Statistics Office also said the unemployment rate jumped to 11.6%, from 10.1% in the first quarter.
The CSO's quarterly national household survey showed that there were 1,938,000 people in work in Q2, a drop of 174,300 or 8.2% from the same period last year. The rate of decline was faster than the first quarter's 7.5%.
A breakdown showed that the biggest fall in employment was in construction, where there was a drop of 86,000 or 35.6% over 12 months.
The wholesale and retail category and the industrial sector also recorded big drops in the numbers working.
The CSO figures also show that the total number of people in the labour force fell by 36,500, or 1.6%, over the year to 2.2m.
The number of non-Irish workers in the labour force dropped by almost 10% over the year to 325,400. 274,600 of these were working, while 50,800 were unemployed, more than double the figure for Q2 last year.
Minister for Finance, Brian Lenihan, said the latest unemployment figures show that the rate of increase is slowing down, and that that the overall number is behind projections for where we would be at this stage.
Mr Lenihan said the figures were 'another sign that the economy is bottoming out'.
