Ireland's jobless rate drops to 12% in Q1

Ireland's unemployment rate dropped from 12.2 percent to 12 percent in the first three months of 2014 over the previous quarter, figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) showed on Monday. Long-term unemployment accounted for 60.5 percent of total unemployment in the first quarter of 2014, compared with 61.8 percent a year earlier and 63.5 percent in the first quarter of 2012. The total number of persons in the labor force in the first quarter of 2014 was 2,146,300, representing an increase of 8,800 over the year. The number of persons not in the labor force in the first quarter of 2014 was 1,450,200, a decrease of 6,800 over the year.