The rate of unemployment rose to a seasonally adjusted 13.1% in the final three months of last year.
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That figure was up from 12.5% in the previous three months and 8.1% a year earlier.
The figures were contained in the Quarterly National Household Survey released by the Central Statistics Office today.
More than 60% of the fall in the number of men in employment is down to a drop of 77,700 employed in the construction sector.
The age group that suffered the biggest drop in employment was 20 to 24 years of age, recording a 9% fall over the year.
At the end of last year, 189,100 men and 78,400 women were unemployed, which is an increase of 57% for men and 49% for women over the year.
The unemployment rate among those with a third-level honours degree or above was 6.1%.
Unemployment among those with a third-level non-honours degree was 8.6%.
The figures also show a sharp rise in long-term unemployment - people out of work for more than a year.
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 CSO said more than half of this 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.
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.
