{"id":164925,"date":"2025-11-05T21:52:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T21:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/164925\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T21:52:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T21:52:09","slug":"unemployment-finance-minister-nicola-willis-says-rise-in-hours-worked-shows-economy-improving","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/164925\/","title":{"rendered":"Unemployment: Finance Minister Nicola Willis says rise in hours worked shows economy improving"},"content":{"rendered":"

There had also been a shift away from part-time to fulltime employment, with the fulltime rate up and the part-time rate down, Willis told Hosking.<\/p>\n

Some economists believed unemployment figures<\/a> would drop next quarter, and others were more cautious, as was she.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnemployment figures can bounce around a little bit. So I\u2019m not in the camp where I\u2019m confidently saying that we\u2019ve absolutely, definitely got the highest read at this point \u2026 we\u2019ll see how it plays.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we are seeing across the economy [is] a lot of signs the bottom has been reached and we are now very much in recovery, growing this quarter, expect to accelerate into more growth next quarter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asked about the underutilisation figures of 12.9%, up from 12.8% in the June quarter, Willis said they were always a \u201csign that you don\u2019t have enough work in the economy to satisfy the people who are wanting work\u201d.<\/p>\n

Underutilisation measures those who have some work but say they need more.<\/p>\n

There was a simple way to fix this: get inflation and interest rates under control, which the Government had done, Willis said.<\/p>\n

Lower taxes also helped. \u201cOnce you\u2019ve got that in place, firms will have the confidence to start investing and hiring again.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Government was \u201cambitious to drive it along\u201d, and that was why it wanted to fast-track private sector developments that had \u201cliterally thousands of jobs associated with them\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd we\u2019ve had four of those approved already, and many of them will be kicking off well before Christmas. That\u2019s why we\u2019re driving along these public infrastructure projects<\/a> with $7 billion worth of them starting before Christmas.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was also why the Government wanted to open new markets for exporters, welcome international investment and cut red tape for businesses, Willis said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of those things are about giving employers the confidence to take on new workers, because … you don\u2019t just do it with a Government hiring spree.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou actually need private, independent businesses saying, \u2018I like what\u2019s ahead, I\u2019m confident, I\u2019m hiring.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There had also been a shift away from part-time to fulltime employment, with the fulltime rate up and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":164926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[174],"tags":[6150,79,179,18,1729,51566,24372,17929,19,95087,2761,17,44130,5315,25515,21980,28628,20200,5708,12443,2297,4532,21981,95086,699],"class_list":{"0":"post-164925","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-activity","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-eire","12":"tag-finance","13":"tag-going","14":"tag-good","15":"tag-hours","16":"tag-ie","17":"tag-improving","18":"tag-in","19":"tag-ireland","20":"tag-kiwis","21":"tag-minister","22":"tag-more","23":"tag-nicola","24":"tag-rise","25":"tag-says","26":"tag-shows","27":"tag-sign","28":"tag-unemployment","29":"tag-which","30":"tag-willis","31":"tag-worked","32":"tag-working"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/115499312496059493","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164925","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=164925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/164925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/164926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=164925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=164925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=164925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}