Daft Property - Irish Property News

Spectre of gloom looms for those who keep their jobs as well as those laid off... GOING, GOING gone. Once these three words were the oft-repeated mantra of Ireland's busy auctioneers; now they form a gloomy synopsis of the state of the Irish jobs market. With no homes going under the hammer, the axe fell on jobs in the construction sector over the course of 2008. A decisive coinciding blow from the global economic crisis saw the reverberations spread through all sectors of the economy. Jobs are now being lost at such a fast rate that an Opposition leader (Labour Party's Eamon Gilmore) can call the soaring unemployment rate a "national crisis" and it doesn't sound like political hyperbole. Having started the year below 5 per cent, the estimated unemployment rate in November was 7.8 per cent. Economists now forecast that the rate will jump to double digits by the end of 2009. Almost 100,000 people joined the Live Register of unemployment benefit claimants in the fir...