Figures issued by the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment on Monday show that Irish redundancies for the year to October amounted to 32,076 jobs - - a 50.2% increase on the comparable period in 2007. The economy is losing on average  712 jobs each week.

An employee who has completed 2 years service with the same employer is ordinarily entitled to a statutory redundancy payment under the Redundancy Payments Acts, 1967-2003.

Services firms have had 9,907 redundancies to date.

ISME, which represents small and medium companies, said that the latest redundancy figures show the labour market is in danger of imploding altogether.

ISME chief executive Mark Fielding said that pay increases must be taken off the agenda.

Director of the Small Firms Association, Patricia Callan said: “small business owner-managers are now faced daily with the difficult decision of telling someone they have lost their job, in order to cut costs and give the business the best chance possible of surviving the economic downturn, and keeping the remaining jobs secure. It is time the government and the unions realise that our best chance of surviving this economic downturn, is to moderate our expectations, reduce cost pressures on small businesses in all areas and trade our way out of this downturn”.

A regional comparison shows that more than 37.18% of all jobs lost were in Dublin, followed by Cork, Galway, and Limerick with job losses of 3122, 1812 & 1529 respectively. “These figures clearly demonstrate that job losses are becoming much more regionally spread. This poses particular challenges as the loss of such a significant number of jobs in regional areas will be more difficult to replace than in the capital,” commented Callan, who called on the state agencies concerned, “to do all in their power to promote the creation of enterprise, and therefore employment, in a regionally-balanced way.”

Males suffered nearly 72% of all job losses, with the balance of 28% by females. These figures differ from the trend in 2007, which showed just 61% of jobs going from males, vs. 39% from females.