Northern Ireland's unemployment rate has jumped to 3.7 per cent, its largest quarterly jump since October 2012.
In the six weeks from September to mid October, employers proposed laying off 1,720 staff.
Record high numbers of proposed redundancies were recorded in June and July, and this is now translating into confirmed redundancies, with almost 2,000 redundancy notifications received in the last three months.
There is a delay between the proposed and confirmed redundancies as employers must give 30 days notice for between 20 and 99 redundancies and 90 days notice for more than 100 redundancies.
Employers must notify the department when making 20 or more employees redundant. The figure does not include those making fewer than 20 staff redundant.
Over the latest 12-month period there were 8,860 proposed redundancies, an increase of 90% from the previous year.
New jobs data out. Increase in proposed redundancies (plus 570 proposed 1st 12 days of Oct)
— Ryan McAleer (@RyanMcAleerbiz) October 13, 2020
Claimant count unchanged at 62k (although based on new weighting methodology). Unemployment rate finally creeping up to 3.7% for June-August (no doubt still masked by furlough scheme) https://t.co/QoDGFxvQdB
Some 62,000 people in the north (6.7% of the workforce) were claiming unemployment related benefits in October, more than double the figure in March, however, the same as September.
There was a 1.7% fall in the number of paid employees in NI between March and April.
The Department of Economy said in it's statement: "Put into the context of the UK, NI has the lowest employment and unemployment rates and the highest economic inactivity rate of all the UK regions."
NI labour market statistics out this morning. Unemployment rate is starting to rise at a notable rate. 3.7% in period Jun-Aug (compares with record low of 2.3% in Feb-Apr). Still a period with over 200k + on furlough for most of that period.
— Richard Ramsey (@Ramseconomics) October 13, 2020
Simon Hamilton, who once held health, finance and economy portfolios at Stormont and is now chief executive of Belfast Chamber of Commerce, has issued a passionate plea to ministers to "think again" about going down the road of a so-called circuit breaker shutdown.
Mr Hamilton says the Chamber accepts the severity of the current situation, but insists: “It's clear that whatever measures the Executive introduce, they won’t kill off the virus, but the inadvertent effect of their decisions could kill off many businesses and lots of jobs, affecting thousands upon thousands of families."
