Exports Lead To Jobs
The budget of two thousand and twelve, by necessity, can not be designed to stimulate the economy. At a time when the economy is gasping for measures that will spur job creation, the Government must further apply the breaks. There was some respite for the lower paid with an increase on the Universal Social Charge band from just over four thousand euro to ten thousand and thirty six euro.
In terms of creating jobs, there was a mixed bag of indirect taxes – fuel surcharges can only have a direct impact on the bottom line, however an increase in DIRT tax is designed to encourage people to spend their savings; if there was to be a lift in consumer spending, there might well be a corresponding lift in jobs. However, an increase in the rate of VAT can only dampen conumer spending further.
My feeling around this budget is that it should not overly dampen the incipient growth that Ireland is now experiencing. It seems that Ireland is experiencing employment growth in certain sectors. Recent positive employment data from America shows an increase of 120,000 jobs last month, however there has been the suggestion that the majority of these jobs are seasonal / retail.
Some hope that this is not the case for Ireland comes from a recent report by Irish Jobs Site Jobsearch.ie . This free jobs site has seen a steady increase in jobs posted over the year, 2011, and the report categorically affirms that this is not down to any increase in marketing activity. The report states that these increases have been quite sectoral – however, it seems that the majority of extra jobs being created are not in retail or other service industries, and are in areas that seem to be more beneficial to the economy – the preponderance of extra jobs added over the year have been in the IT and Digital Sectors, while there has also been a significant up-tick in jobs that relate to manufacturing, particularly in the pharma and bio-medical areas.
This news appears to reflect the health of our export sector, and if only Europe can sort out the Euro debacle and America finds its form again, then this sector will be given its head and will pull Ireland out of this slump and will hopefully reduce the severity of forthcoming budgets.