DUBLIN, July 3 (Xinhua) -- Ireland's unemployment rate has dropped to an almost 11-year low with the latest June jobless rate standing at 5.1 percent in the country, the lowest since October 2007, according to the statistics released by Central Statistics Office (CSO) of Ireland on Tuesday.
In June, there were altogether 120,200 people remaining jobless in the country and they included 64,600 males and 55,500 females, said the CSO statistics.
In the month, the jobless rate for males stood at 5.1 percent, down from 7.2 percent in June 2017 while that for females stood at 5.2 percent, down from 5.9 percent over a year ago, it said.
Commenting on the latest CSO figures, Alan McQuaid, an economist of a local economic research company Merrion Capital, said that the jobless rate in Ireland is more than three percentage points below the current Eurozone average of 8.4 percent, reflecting a better performance of the Irish labor market as well as its economy in the region.
However, he said that the youth unemployment rate, which refers to the jobless rate of people aged 15 to 24, still remained high in the country with the June figure standing at 11.4 percent despite a slight drop from 11.8 percent in the preceding month of May.
"The government can't afford to rest on its laurels", he said.
McQuaid predicted that the unemployment rate in Ireland could further drop to 5 percent in July but the overall jobless rate for the entire 2018 is likely to land at about 5.1 percent, down 1.6 percentage points from 6.7 percent in 2017.
