
Unemployment in Northern Ireland has more than doubled in two months, official figures suggest.
They show that claimant count unemployment increased from 29,700 in March to to 65,200 in May.
Claimant count includes Jobseeker's Allowance claimants and those people on Universal Credit who were claiming principally for the reason of being unemployed.
The figures are from the NI Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra).
The increase of 5,700 from April to May was less dramatic than the jump of almost 30,000 from March to April.
The claimant count is now above its most recent peak in February 2013 when it hit 64,800.
Nisra estimates that the claimant count unemployment rate is now 7%.
The other, preferred, method of measuring the unemployment rate is the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
However, the current survey results only cover the early period from of the coronavirus lockdown.
The figures also suggest that more firms are planning to make redundancies.
Just under 350 redundancies were proposed in May, but more than 1,400 were proposed in the first two weeks of June.
Across the UK, the number of workers on payrolls fell by more than 600,000, according to the Office for National Statistics.