THE NUMBER OF people under the age of 25 signing on for social welfare has reached over 32,000.
New figures released today by the CSO for July 2017 show that there were 32,237 people under 25 signing on the live register, up by 505 since June.
The National Youth Council of Ireland (NYCI) said it is concerned at the third monthly increase in the number of young people seeking welfare payments.
The CSO figures also showed that over 11,000 young people are long-term unemployed, meaning they haven’t worked for a period of a year or longer.
James Doorley, NYCI deputy director said his group is disappointed at the increase in young people signing on.
He said: “These figures represent the third month in a row when the numbers have increased. This may, in part, be explained by seasonal trends. Of even greater concern is the high number of long-term unemployed young people. The overall decrease in youth unemployment since 2012 has been welcome.
However, we must not lose sight of the underlying problem of long-term youth unemployment. At 11,257, a substantial cohort of young people has been unemployed for 12 months or more.
The NYCI has called on the Government to try to halve long-term unemployment among youth by the end of next year.
The group has called for a new strategy in bringing young jobseekers into education, training and work experience and also urged Taoiseach Varadkar to invest an additional €47 million to try to cut the numbers.
Doorley added: “We recommend an additional investment of €47.4 million in Budget 2018 to reduce the number of young people long-term unemployed by the end of 2018.
“In the last few weeks we have raised the need for action on the issue of youth unemployment at both the National Economic Dialogue and at the Department of Social Protection’s pre-budget forum.
“While progress has been made, the third monthly increase in the numbers of young people signing on and the consistently high levels of long-term youth unemployment should be sufficient notice that this problem is far from solved and needs attention.”
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