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Minister Bruton speaks to the media

Jobs Minister Richard Bruton has welcomed the news that there was a 1.7% increase in employment this year. Total employment now stands at 1,901,600.

The increase was reported by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) in their Quarter National Household Survey for Quarter 2 2014. Unemployment decreased by 15.4%, bringing the total number of persons unemployed to 254,500.

Minister Bruton said that job creation still remains the "top priority" for the Government, but that the rise in employment shows that the Government strategy to create jobs through schemes such as Pathways to Work and the Action Plan for Jobs is working.

Watch Minister Bruton speaking to the media today on the CSO figures below:

Tánaiste Joan Burton also welcomed the news

The Government’s number one priority is helping people back to work, and these figures show the degree to which the Government strategies to create jobs and reduce the Live Register – the Action Plan for Jobs and Pathways to Work – are succeeding.

Pathways, overseen by my Department, aims to ensure that as many of those newly created jobs as possible go to people on the Live Register.  Again, the figures are welcome evidence of success in this regard – unemployment has now fallen for nine consecutive quarters and now stands at 11.5%, down from a peak of over 15%.

But that rate remains too high and too many people are still out of work and therefore not benefitting from the recovery that is now well under way.

Our number-one priority is to further strengthen the domestic economy and prioritise new jobs for the unemployed. The Budget will be a key step in this regard.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan said:

There are now over 1.9 million people at work. This increase is driven by an increase in full time jobs and there is evidence that people are moving from part time to full time work as conditions in the labour market continue to improve.

It is particularly encouraging that the increase in employment was broadly based with employment gains recorded in 10 of the 14 sectors reported by the CSO.

We have now had seven consecutive quarters of solid annual employment expansion and we have now seen an increase in employment of over 70,000 since the low-point in mid-2012. We are now seeing that the difficult decisions taken by this government over the past few years are bearing fruit.