Press Statement

Preasráiteas

18 February 2020

Go to release: Labour Force Survey (LFS) Quarter 4 2019

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (18 February 2020) issued results from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for Q4 2019.

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 Q4 2019, employment totalled 2,361,200 and this showed an annual increase of 3.5% or 79,900 from Q4 2018. When adjusted for seasonal factors, employment increased by 1.3% or 30,500 between Q3 2019 and Q4 2019.

There were 110,600 people unemployed in Q4 2019, and this showed an annual decrease of 14.2% or 18,300 from Q4 2018. When seasonally adjusted, the unemployment rate decreased from 5.0% to 4.7% between Q3 2019 and Q4 2019, while the seasonally adjusted number of persons unemployed decreased by 4,800 to 115,900.

Long term unemployment, which refers to those persons unemployed for one year or more, accounted for 35.0% of total unemployment in Q4 2019.

In Q4 2019, the total number of persons in the labour force was up 2.6% or 61,600 to 2,471,700 from Q4 2018. The number of persons not in the labour force was 1,471,000 and that was up 0.3% or 4,000 from a year earlier.”

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