Dublin  - With the boom in construction over, Ireland's jobs vacancy rate for March fell by 5 percentage points compared to this time last year, according to an Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) survey released Thursday.

According to the survey, which looked at vacancies across the construction, industrial, retail and services sectors, vacancies in construction fell in March by 5 percentage points to 3 per cent, the lowest rate since the survey began in May 2002.

Compared to March 2007, the vacancy rate in the sector has fallen by 7 percentage points.

The slowdown in the Irish economy led to an additional 12,000 people signing on as unemployed in March, bringing Ireland's rate of unemployment up to 5.5 per cent, according to figures released by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).

This brings the number of claimants on the seasonally-adjusted live register to 199,900, the highest since August 1999.

After improving in February, Irish employers' employment outlook deteriorated somewhat in March with the net employment expectations indicator for all sectors falling by 8 percentage points to minus 7 per cent.

The construction sector was least optimistic with the net employment expectations indicator for the sector falling by 11 percentage points to minus 42 per cent.

This means that the percentage of construction employers expecting a fall in employment levels at their firms over the coming months is 42 per cent higher than those predicting an increase.

Construction employers were pessimistic about future employment in the sector in March 2007, according to the ESRI, but March's net employment expectations indicator suggested that their outlook has deteriorated dramatically since then.

The percentage of firms reporting vacancies in the industry sector increased by 2 percentage points to 17 per cent, which maintained the upward trend that began in January 2008, the ESRI said.

The percentage of firms reporting vacancies in the retail sector fell by 7 percentage points to 2 per cent, while there was a 4 percentage point increase in the number of firms reporting vacancies in the services sector to 14 per cent.

Industry sector employers' employment outlook improved in March. However, a higher proportion of firms in the sector still expected employment levels to fall rather than rise over the coming months.

There was no change in retail sector employers' employment outlook, while there was a considerable decline in service sector employers' future employment outlook.

Irish trade unions have expressed concern about Ireland's inflation rate with figures from the CSO revealing the annual rate of inflation increased to 5 per cent during March from 4.8 per cent during February. (dpa)