In 2022, gender representation across all employments was relatively equal; 51.3% of all employments were represented by males and 48.7% were represented by females. In contrast, among those with earnings in the top 1%, 74.8% were males, while the corresponding figure for females was 25.2%. Although the gender representation across all employments has been relatively consistent in the past decade, the proportion of females in the top 1% of earners has increased by 6.5 percentage points from 18.7% in 2012 to 25.2% in 2022. During the same period, the proportion of females in the top 10% of earners increased by 0.9 percentage points from 28.8% to 29.7% while the proportion of females in the top 25% of earnings decreased by 1.1 percentage points from 39.3% to 38.2% over the ten years from 2012 to 2022. (See Table 1.1).
When considering the annual change in earnings between 2021 and 2022, it should be noted that there may be a compositional effect due to significant changes in the number of active employments in certain sectors. The composition of the labour market during this period was very different to previous years. The changes in average weekly earnings in any sector may be impacted to some degree by those employments that have joined/left the sector having lower/higher average earnings than those employments that remained in the sector in the years being analysed.
Table 1.2 presents the gender representation across all employments and those with the top earnings by economic sector. Males represent the majority of all employments in eight of the 13 economic sectors. Furthermore, males represent the majority of those in the top 1% of earners in each economic sector (See Table 1.2).
The Education and Human Health & Social Work sectors are of particular interest. In 2022, females represented 72.5% of all employments in the Education sector. However, 29% of employments among those with earnings in the top 1% of this sector were represented by females. Similarly, females represented 76.5% of the Human Health & Social Work sector, while occupying 35% of employments within the top 1% of earnings. (See Table 1.2).
As is typical in earnings distributions, a relatively small number of high earners result in a positively skewed earnings distribution of employees in Ireland. In a positively skewed earnings distribution, mean earnings are greater than median earnings as the mean is increased by those higher earners. In such cases, median earnings (the middle earner in the economy or sector) may be a more reflective figure of the average earnings of employees in the economy or sector.
Figure 1.3 below shows the annual earnings at each ventile (every 5th percentile) on the earnings distribution by sex for 2022. Male annual earnings were greater than female earnings at each ventile. The median annual earnings in Ireland in 2022 were €41,824. Median annual earnings for males (€45,537) were 20.5% higher than those for females (€37,782) (See Figure 1.3).
In 2022, there was similar representation of males and females in employments across all age ranges. The largest proportion of employments represented by males was in those aged 30-39 years (52.6%), followed by those aged 60 years and over (51.8%). The largest proportion of employments represented by females was in the 50-59 years age category (49.8%) (See Table 1.4).
Mean annual earnings were lowest among the 15-24 years age group in 2022 for both males (€24,643) and females (€21,441). The age category with the highest mean annual earnings for males in 2022 was 50-59 at €67,392, while the highest mean annual earnings for females was in the 40-49 years age bracket (€51,089) (See Table 1.5).
Similarly, median annual earnings were lowest among the 15-24 years age category in 2022 for both males (€22,845) and females (€19,737). The age group with the highest median annual earnings for males in 2022 was 40-49 at €52,362. This was 23.8% greater than the corresponding age group among females (€42,297). The highest median annual earnings for females was in the 30-39 years age bracket (€42,350) (See Table 1.6).
Both mean and median annual earnings among females peak at an earlier age than among males.
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