Official figures show that the number of people working in the economy in the second quarter of this year fell by more than 8% from a year earlier. 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%.
The fall in the number of men at work over the year was 11.6%, compared with a 3.9% drop for women. The number of people unemployed more than doubled in 12 months to 264,600.
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 2.2 million. 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.
A note from Ulster Bank said the 8.2% annual decline in employment was the sharpest annual drop since quarterly data began in the late 1990s. But the bank said the seasonally adjusted fall of 36,300 compared with the first quarter, while still considerable, represented an easing of the pace of decline from Q1's 69,200 quarterly drop.
Finance Minister Brian Lenihan said the figures showed that the rate of increase was slowing down, and that that the overall number was 'behind projections for where we would be at this stage'. He said the figures were 'another sign that the economy is bottoming out'.
Mr Lenihan also insisted that the Government had taken no decisions on the issue of public service pay.
