Irish Jobless Rate Steady

Ireland’s unemployment rate held steady month-on-month at 6.4% in May but was down from 8.4% a year ago, showing the scale of the improvement over the last 12 months, data showed on Tuesday, Reuters reported. Unemployment has consistently fallen since hitting a peak of 15.1% in early 2012 when Ireland was midway through a three-year international bailout. Employment grew at its fastest annual pace since the financial crisis in the first quarter of 2017. The jobless rate was revised up to 6.4% in April from an initial estimate of 6.2%.