Press Statement

Preasráiteas

17 December 2020

Go to release: Impact of Selected COVID-19 Income Supports on Employees - Insights from Real Time Administrative Sources, Series 1

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (17 December 2020) released Impact of Selected COVID-19 Income Supports on Employees 2020. This report, is the first in a new series from the CSO on ‘Insights from Real Time Administrative Sources’. The aim of this new series is to provide insights into Irish society using datasets from administrative systems and is an example of the policy-relevant research projects the CSO are developing as part of its leadership role in the Irish Statistical System.

Commenting on the release, Brian Cahill, Statistician, said: 

‘This publication presents analysis of the impact selected COVID-19 Income Support Schemes had on the income of employees in Ireland in the first three-quarters of 2020. Employee earnings data from the Revenue Commissioners were combined with data on COVID-19 income support schemes from Revenue and the Department of Social Protection under the auspices of the Statistics Act 1993 to provide the basis for this analysis.

This report examines the extent to which employees’ median weekly earnings and income were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact selected COVID-19 income support schemes had on the income of recipient employees.

Median weekly income of employees who did not receive income supports was higher than that of support recipients. Recipients who received supports in both Q2 and Q3 2020 had the lowest median weekly incomes when compared with those who received supports in Q2 2020 only. This difference in median weekly income between Recipient and Non-Recipient employees widened since the COVID-19 pandemic started as the income of Non-Recipients continued to grow in the first three-quarters of 2020 while Recipients income fell significantly with the onset of the pandemic. Of those employees who received COVID-19 income supports, the groups that were least negatively affected by COVID-19, relative to their income in 2019, were female employees, those aged under 25 and low earners.

Median weekly earnings of all employees combined, which excludes COVID-19 income support, fell significantly in the year to Q2 2020 and Q3 2020 for all demographic categories. However, when COVID-19 income supports are included in employee income, the scale of these falls is reduced and for some categories their income increased in the period.'

Other main results include:

Panel Analysis of Recipient and Non-Recipient Employees present in all Quarters Q1 2019 to Q3 2020

• The median weekly income of Non-Recipient employees, who did not receive supports, was higher than the median of Recipient employees, which included COVID-19 income supports. This difference in median income between Recipient and Non-Recipient employees widened since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic
• Median weekly income of employees who did not receive supports increased by 5.4% in the year to Q3 2020
• Median weekly income of employees who received selected supports in Q2 2020, but not in Q3 2020, fell by 9.7% in the year to Q2 2020 but increased by 4.2% in the year to Q3 2020 as the economy re-opened
• Median income of employees who received supports in both Q2 2020 and Q3 2020 dropped by 16.3% in the year to Q2 2020 and by 13.2% in the year to Q3 2020

Matched Cohort Analysis of COVID-19 Income Support Recipients and Non-Recipients

• The median weekly income of Recipient employees dropped by 13.9% in the year to Q2 2020, compared with a rise of 4.7% for Non-Recipient In the year to Q3 2020, Recipients’ median income fell 12.0% while that of Non-Recipients rose by 5.0% in the year
• Employees aged under 25 who received supports had an increase of 16.0% in their median weekly income in the year to Q2 2020, compared with a drop of 18.2% for those aged 25 and over
• While all counties experienced falls in median earnings in the year to Q3 2020, Donegal had the lowest decrease in median weekly income of 3.7% compared to the highest decline in Dublin of 15.6%

Matched Cohort Analysis of Employee Income including and excluding COVID-19 Support Income

• The median employment earnings of all employees fell by 15.0% in the year to Q2 2020. When COVID-19 income supports were included however, median weekly income had a smaller decline of 6.5% in the period. In the year to Q3 2020 median earnings of all employees fell by 5.7%, while median income decreased by 0.9 in the year
• The share of employees with weekly earnings, excluding income supports, of Less than €300 rose to 27.5% of all employees in the year to Q3 2020 an increase of 11.3 percentage points. When COVID-19 income supports are included, the share of employees in this earnings band fell by 3.9 percentage points to 12.3% of all employees, as employee income moved over the earnings threshold into the higher earnings band

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