There has been a sharp fall in the number of people in employment, according to the latest figures from the Central Statistics Office's Quarterly National Household Survey.
In the year to March, the CSO says there was a decrease of 158,500 jobs. This is equal to a 7.5% fall in employment.
The worst affected sector was the construction industry where the numbers employed fell by 28.6%. The figures released today give an unemployment rate of 10.2% - the highest since 1997. This was up from 8.1% in the previous quarter.
The figures show that there were 1,965,600 people at work in the first quarter of the year, while 222,800 people were unemployed. The number unemployed has doubled in a year, according to the CSO.
Over the year, the number of men in employment was down 10.2%, while the number of women working was 3.9% lower.
A breakdown showed that the number working in construction fell by 72,200, or 28.6%, over the year. Job numbers in the wholesale and retail sector were down more than 30,000, while industry jobs were almost 20,000 lower.
The CSO said the number of non-Irish people in the labour force was 336,400 a drop of almost 30,000 over a year. These accounted for 14.6% of the total number of people in work. The figure had reached 16.2% in the final quarter of 2007.
287,000 foreign nationals were employed - a fall of 55,000 from a year earlier - and 49,400 were unemployed. The number of unemployed foreign nationals more than doubled over the year.
Alan McQuaid of Bloxham Stockbrokers said today's fall was the largest annual decrease in employment since the labour force survey was first undertaken in 1975.
'It is quite clear that what started off as a problem in the construction sector as regards job losses has now spread like wild fire into other parts of the economy,'the economist noted.
He said that while the Government's main aim at the moment must be to sort out the banking crisis, it can not afford to take its eye off the ball as regards the labour market.
'But, despite the likelihood that unemployment will continue to rise over the next twelve months or so, we still think that the jobless rate won't hit 17% as some of the most pessimistic forecasts suggest,' he added.
