Ireland: 12% unemployment rate among East European workers. The migrants are affected more than the locals

Ireland, one of the countries most affected by the global recession, counts a record number of unemployed – 413,000 people lacked a job in June, that is 11.9% f the population or 18% of the total work force.

Nevertheless, the unemployment rate saw a constant decrease from the beginning of the year. 33,000workers lost their job in January and, since then, the figures dropped to 11,400 people in June, the latest figure since September 2008.

East-Europeans – the worse hit

According to the social data, over 20% of the total numbers of workers coming from East Europe to work in Ireland are jobless, against 10%, the figure for Irish workers.

„For each East-European worker asking for social benefits, two other East-Europeans decide to return to their country of origin”, high Irish officials declared. Workers from Hungary, Poland and Lithuania are the worst affected.

The worse hit sector remains the construction department, where 200,000 people lost their jobs within the last two years. The forecast announced another 100,000 job axes by the end of 2010.

The state can invest a maximum of one billion euros in the construction department in 2009, significantly less than in the boom years, when the segment saw around five to six billion euros.

For all this time, the number of births exploded in Ireland, seeing a record since the ’70s. Since 2006, there have been 60,000 births in Ireland, a Catholic country that outlaws abortion but awards huge sums of money for social and child care.

Ireland has been badly affected by the economic crisis. The country’s economy entered recession in the first part of 2008: it was the first state in the euro zone to declare recession. The Irish economy shrank by 8.5% in the first trimester of this year, against the same period in 2008.