There has been a slight drop in dole queues according to new figures for last month.

They show 2,200 fewer people were claiming benefits. That left a total of more than 426,000 people on the Live Register which is a drop of 10,000 on a year ago.

It leaves the standardised unemployment rate at 14% unchanged from February.

On a seasonally adjusted basis the Live Register showed a monthly decrease of 2,500 men in March, while women increased by 300 over the same period.

The number of long-term claimants last month stood at almost 188,000. Again men here decreased by 1,065 while females increased by 4,496.

Casual & part-time workers

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) says there were 89,798 casual and part-time workers on the Live Register in March, which is just over 21% of the total Register.

This compares with 20.4% a year earlier when there were 88,716 casual and part-time workers. In the year to March the number of these workers increased by just over 1,000.

While the number of persons aged 25 and over decreased by 2,565 and the number of persons aged under 25 also fell by 6,401 in the year to March.