It’s always nice to read a good-news story. Whether it’s a kitten rescued from a tree or Nelson McCausland discovering a native Ulster-Scots speaker, good news lifts the heart. Which is probably why the Belfast Telegraph today is trumpeting the “remarkable transformation” in Catholic unemployment in our NEN. It has more than halved, the newspaper reveals. It was 18% and now it’s 7%. If that’s not a good news story, I’ll…
But hold. It appears this change occurred over a period of twenty-five years. Back in 1992, the unemployment rate for Protestants was 9% and that for Catholics 18%. Which means that the Catholic rate of unemployment here lessened each year by a whopping…um, just over 1%. I think. Mmm. Not quite so meteoric a change. And …I can see you want some related information, so here it is. The Protestant percentage of unemployment has gone from 9% to 5%. So the gap between the two communities has shrunk dramatically. But it’s still there. And if you look at the glass half-full, the employment figures for Catholics is 68% and for Protestants 71%. Maybe we should just be grateful.
All this information comes from the Labour Force Religion Report, which has some other interesting information. Like, Catholics are more likely to be students and Protestants more likely to be home-owners, which could be interpreted as reflecting the fact that the Protestant community is older, the Catholic population younger.
But here’s what is perhaps the most significant feature of all in the report. Between 1990 and 2016, the Protestant proportion of the population who are 16 years of age or over has dropped from 56% to 44%. Over the same period Catholics went from 28% in 1990 to 42% two years ago.
Was that you making that ticking noise, Virginia?
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