unemployment in ireland explained by graphs

Google launched a new toy today called ‘public data‘. It allows you to mess around with stats and graphs and make boring stuff interesting 🙂 Like unemployment rates for example…

Here’s what it’s like to be under 25 and male in Ireland going back as far as the mid 80’s. If you’re under 25 and male in 2010, there’s about a 39% chance you’re unemployed. So you better get ageing quickly if you want a job!

Same stats only for the females aged under 25.

Now we have the over 25’s (both sexes)…

Here we have both sexes and age groups combined…

Finally, here’s how Ireland’s unemployment rate compares to our old enemy (UK) and one of our newer eastern European friends (Poland)…

As you can see from these graphs, we’ve been hit hard & quickly. Much more so than most other EU countries.

On the flip side, Poland’s unemployment rate has dropped from 18% (Feb 2005) to 9% (Jan 2010) in the last 5 years. In the same period, ours has risen from 4.2% to 13.8%. Fascinating stuff. Thanks Google, for making boring stuff a bit more interesting.

Go ahead and check it all out for yourself… there isn’t much data at the minute but no doubt it’ll grow over time.