Press Statement

Preasráiteas

27 August 2019

Go to release: Labour Force Survey (LFS) Quarter 2 2019

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (27 August 2019) issued results from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for Q2 2019. This survey replaced the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) from the beginning of Q3 2017.

Commenting on the report, Jim Dalton, Statistician, said: “The LFS is the official source of data for employment and unemployment in Ireland. Key findings show that in Q2 2019, employment totalled 2,300,000 and this showed an annual increase of 2.0% or 45,000 from Q2 2018. However, when adjusted for seasonal factors, employment fell by 0.9% or 20,900 between Q1 2019 and Q2 2019.

There were 130,800 people unemployed in Q2 2019, and this showed an annual decrease of 9.4% or 13,600 from Q2 2018. When seasonally adjusted, the unemployment rate increased slightly from 5.1% to 5.2% between Q1 2019 and Q2 2019, while the seasonally adjusted number of persons unemployed increased by 3,700 to 126,100.

Long term unemployment, which refers to those persons unemployed for one year or more, accounted for 31.2% of total unemployment in Q2 2019.

In Q2 2019, the total number of persons in the labour force was up 1.3% or 31,400 to 2,430,800 from Q2 2018. The number of persons not in the labour force was 1,481,800 and that was up 2.3% or 32,900 from a year earlier.”

-- ENDS --