THE STANDARDISED RATE of unemployment in Ireland has risen in November to 14.5 per cent, up from 14.4 per cent in October as eurozone unemployment hit a record high according to the latest figures.

The Central Statistics Office’s latest figures show that the seasonally adjusted rate of unemployment has seen an increase of 1,700 signing on the Live Register over the past month bringing the total number to 448,600.

In unadjusted terms there were 429,567 people signing on the Live Register in November which represents a 1.1 per cent increase over the year but a fall on October’s figure of 430,432.

For both the standardised rate of unemployment and the seasonally adjusted total the figures for November are at their joint highest level of the year and the unemployment rate overall remains flat.

November figures also show that 58.1 per cent of those signing on the Live Register are short term claimants compered to the November 2010 figure which showed that 64.6 per cent of those signing on were short-term.

The number of long term claimants on the live register was just below 180,000 in November but overall the rate of increase in long term claimants has been slowing throughout the year, the CSO says.

Eurozone

Meanwhile, overall unemployment in the eurozone hit 10.3 per cent in October which is an all-time record, according to the latest figures from Eurostat.

In total over 16 million men and women were out of work in the economic area, according to the seasonally adjusted figures. While across the 27 EU member states the jobless rate rose to 9.8 per cent up from 9.7 per cent in September.

Overall over 23.5 million were unemployed in the EU in October.

The highest unemployment rate is in Spain –  22.8 per cent, followed by Greece – 18.3 per cent. The lowest rate of unemployment was recorded in Austria where there is 4.1 per cent unemployment.