25 June 2020
Go to release: LFS Employment Series Q1 2020
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (25 June 2020) issued a further detailed breakdown and further disaggregation of employment data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) in respect of the first quarters of 2014 to 2020. Whilst the headline totals have previously been published by the CSO, these breakdowns and aggregations published today offer considerable additional insight.
Commenting on the report, Jim Dalton, Statistician, said: ‘The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is the official source of data for employment in Ireland. The COVID-19 pandemic has had a considerable impact on the Irish Labour Market and that impact started towards the end of Quarter 1 2020. As the CSO is obliged to follow standard definitions and methodology when calculating the official estimates from the LFS, this detailed breakdown and further disaggregation of employment data has been compiled in the usual way along with already published COVID-19 adjusted estimates of employment for the state. Please see the Information Note on the Impact of COVID-19 on the Labour Force Survey (Information Note on the Implications of COVID-19 on the Labour Force Survey) for more information.
Some key findings show that when the standard International Labour Organisation (ILO) criteria is used, the unadjusted number of persons aged 15 years and over in employment stood at 2,353,500 in Q1 2020.
However, when the effects of COVID-19 are considered, the COVID-19 Adjusted Measure of Employment, or lower bound of the number of persons aged 15 years and over in employment, was estimated to have been 2,070,371 at the end of March 2020.
Using the standard ILO criteria again, the proportion of persons who gave the reason for being in part-time employment as ‘Person could not find a full-time job’ was 13.1% (62,700 persons). This compares with Q1 2014 when 41.4% or 179,600 persons gave this reason for being in part-time employment.
Today’s release also includes a detailed breakdown of the average usual hours worked per week. Of the 14 economic sectors, Agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors had the highest average at 47.5 hours per week in Q1 2020 with the Education sector having the lowest at 30.2 hours per week.
Self-employed persons usually worked an average of 44.4 hours per week in Q1 2020, while the corresponding number for employees was 35.1 hours. The average for persons in full-time and part-time employment was 40.6 and 18.4 hours per week respectively.
In Q1 2020, the proportion of employees who reported not being a permanent employee because the ‘Person could not find a permanent job’ was 33.0%. The corresponding figure in Q1 2014 was 62.2%.
The proportion of those who indicated that they ‘usually’ do work at home was 8.8% in Q1 2020. The share of persons who ‘sometimes’ work at home was 14.3% while it was 76.9% for those persons who ‘never’ work at home.
Finally, the number of persons in full-time employment in Q1 2020 accounted for just over 79.5% of all employment – up from the figure of 76.2% recorded in Q1 2014.’
For further information contact:
Jim Dalton, Labour Market Analysis - 086-678-0316
-- ENDS --