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It was a busy week for stats releases with a number of reports published by the Central Statistics Office. The monthly unemployment rate for February 2016 dropped to 8.8%, while retail sales were up 10.3% in the year. An Access to Finance report published this week gives an insight into borrowing for small business in 2014. There was also good news for the manufacturing sector as latest stats show a 48% increase in production in January 2016 compared to the same period last year.

We've the key stats to know from each of these reports.

Unemployment rate drops to 8.8% in February

• The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for February 2016 was 8.8%, down from 8.9% in January 2016
• That figure is down from 10% in February 2015
• The seasonally adjusted number of persons unemployed was 190,900 in February 2016, a decrease of 2,000 when compared to the January 2016 figure or a decrease of 23,400 when compared to February 2015

For more information, check out the CSO Monthly Unemployment report.

Retail sales up 10.3% in January 2016 compared to January 2015

• The  volume of retail sales increased by 4.1% in January 2016 when compared with December 2015
• That's an increase of 10.3% in the annual figure
• Motor Trades  (+9.1%), Electrical Goods (+6.0%) and Clothing, Footwear & Textiles (+2.8%) saw the largest month on month increases.
• The sectors with the largest monthly decreases were Other Retail Sales (-3.0%) and Furniture & Lighting (-1.8%). 

See CSO Retail Sales Index for more information.

1 in 5 SMEs applied for bank finance in 2014

• Bank finance was the most popular type of finance sought with over one-fifth of all small and medium sized enterprises applying for such finance in 2014. Relatively few SMEs looked for finance from non-bank sources, with only 4.7% of medium sized enterprises looking for equity finance compared to 39.8% of similar sized enterprises who looked for bank finance. 
• Over 70% of SME bank finance applications were successful
• Exporting SMEs were noticeably more successful than non-exporting SMEs when applying for bank finance. Almost 95% of exporting SMEs were successful compared to 67% for non-exporting enterprises
• More than half (50.1%) of all applications for bank finance indicated that the finance was to be used as working capital. Nearly 40% of applications for other types of finance and over one-third of applications for equity finance specified the need for working capital. Other reasons for seeking finance included investment in property, intangibles and export growth
• 80% of SMEs who did not apply for bank finance indicated that their business did not need bank finance. Just under 7% of these SMEs did not apply for bank finance because they felt they would have loan repayment difficulties, while approximately 6% of those who did not apply believed that the banks were not lending.

For the full Access to Finance 2014 report, see the CSO's website.

Manufacturing production up 48% in January 2016 compared to same period last year

• Production for manufacturing industries for January 2016 was 15.0% higher than in December 2015 
• The seasonally adjusted volume of industrial production for Manufacturing Industries for the three months November 2015 to January 2016 was 5.6% higher than in the preceding three month period 
• Turnover increased by 5.4% for Manufacturing Industries in January 2016 when compared with December 2015.  On an annual basis turnover increased by 16.0% when compared with January 2015.

For more information, see CSO Industrial Production Turnover report.