Labour Force Survey Quarter 2 2021

At the end of June 2021, the COVID-19 Adjusted Measure of Employment, or the lower bound of the number of persons aged 15 years and over in employment, was estimated to have been 2,120,778 with an associated COVID-19 Adjusted Employment Rate of 61.7% for those aged 15-64 years.

By the end of July 2021, the COVID-19 Adjusted Measure of Employment is estimated to have been 2,185,773 with an associated COVID-19 Adjusted Employment Rate of 63.7% while the corresponding values for the end of August 2021 are 2,205,494 and 64.3%.

COVID-19 Adjusted Measure of Unemployment

The CSO began publishing COVID-19 Adjusted Estimates of Unemployment as part of the MUE release for March 2020. The latest COVID-19 Adjusted Unemployment Estimates for March 2020 to August 2021 inclusive were published in the August 2021 MUE release on 01 September 2021. The COVID-19 Adjusted Volume of Unemployment for August 2021 was calculated by adding the number of recipients of the (PUP) for the last week of August 2021 to the non-seasonally adjusted estimate of the volume of unemployed persons in August 2021. These measures should be considered as the upper bound for unemployment.

At the end of June 2021, the COVID-19 adjusted number of unemployed persons aged 15-74 years is estimated to have been 413,687 with an associated COVID-19 adjusted unemployment rate of 16.2%. By the end of July 2021, this adjusted measure of unemployment had reduced to 356,648 with an associated unemployment rate of 13.5% with a further fall seen during August 2021 to bring the estimates down to 335,178 and 12.4% respectively.

ILO status and Principal Economic Status (PES) for those in receipt of COVID-19 income supports in Q2 2021

The official measures of employment and unemployment published from the LFS are based on a series of questions that objectively classify a person as Employed, Unemployed or Inactive using the ILO concepts and definitions. The Principal Economic Status (PES), on the other hand, is a subjective self-assessment by the respondent of their own economic status and the labour market status assigned to an individual from the LFS using the standard ILO methodology may not agree with their own subjective assessment of their situation. For example, a person laid off with no assurance of return to work may be perceived by many as unemployed. However, under objective ILO guidelines, unless this person is actively seeking work and available to take up employment within two weeks, (s)he is deemed to be Inactive and outside the Labour Force.

Table 7.2 below presents the percentages of all persons aged 15 years and older who were in each of the ILO and PES categories in Q2 2021. The percentage breakdowns by ILO and PES are also presented separately for those who were in receipt of the PUP and for those who are estimated to have benefitted from the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) during the interview reference week in Q2 2021.

For all three groups, the percentage of those who were classified as Employed on the objective (ILO) basis is higher than the number ‘At work’ using the subjective (PES) basis. The share of all persons aged 15 years and older who were classified as Employed using the ILO criteria was 58.5% while it was 55.1% for those ‘At work’ using the PES measure.

Of those in receipt of the PUP in the reference week in Q2 2021, 59.5% were classified as Employed on the ILO basis while 54.5% classified themselves as ‘At work’ using the PES. On the other hand, 96.0% of those in receipt of the EWSS were classified as Employed on the ILO basis while 89.7% self-classified themselves as ‘At work’ using the PES.

The percentage of those who were classified as Unemployed on the objective (ILO) basis was lower for all three groups.

Persons in receipt of the PUP in the reference week in Q2 2021 were more likely to self-classify themselves as Unemployed using PES (21.0%) than when objectively classified as Unemployed on the ILO basis (17.1%).

The difference for all persons aged 15 years and over was of a lower order; 4.6% were classified as unemployed on the ILO basis and 5.5% self-classified themselves as unemployed using PES.

Virtually all of those benefitting from the EWSS were officially classified as either Employed or Inactive while just 0.9% were objectively classified as Unemployed on the ILO basis

Persons who are not classified as either Employed or Unemployed are deemed to be outside the Labour Force and are classified as Inactive. The proportion of all persons aged 15 years and older who were assessed as being ‘inactive’ using the PES was higher (39.3%) that when assessed on an ILO basis (36.9%).

While those in receipt of the PUP were just as likely to classify themselves as inactive using either of the ILO or PES criteria, those in receipt of EWSS were more likely to classify themselves as Inactive using PES at 9.1% compared to being classified as Inactive using the ILO criteria (3.1%).

Absences from work and actual hours worked per week in the LFS

In the LFS, a person can still be classified as Employed even if absent from work due to layoff, off season, parental leave or any other reason (other than holidays, maternity/paternity leave, leave due to illness or education and training) when interviewed using the ILO criteria provided they expect to return to the job within three months or that combined with receiving some job related income or benefit in the case of parental leave. All other absences such as holidays, maternity/paternity leave, illness leave, or education and training are deemed to still contain an attachment to the job and are thus classified as Employed.

Those who are classified as Employed on the ILO basis and who worked during the reference week are asked for the number of hours they worked that week (‘Actual Hours’). The estimate of the total number of ‘Actual Hours’ worked per week in each quarter is calculated by adding together the number of ‘Actual Hours’ worked in the reference week for all persons in employment.

Table 7.3 above presents the numbers in employment, the numbers absent from work and the ‘Actual Hours’ worked per week in Q2 of 2019, 2020 and 2021. The annual changes and annual percentage changes to Q2 2020 and Q2 2021 are also presented.

While the numbers in employment on the ILO basis, which stood at 2,349,100 in Q2 2021, was up 211,000 or 9.9% over the year since Q2 2020, the number of employed persons who were absent from work was down 247,600 or 52.8% to 220,900. This resulted in an increase of 14.9 million in the number of hours worked to 75.9 million hours in Q2 2021, having stood at 61.0 million hours per week in Q2 2020.

The effects of COVID-19 were very apparent in Q2 2020 as many of the public health measures were in force for the whole quarter. The number of absences from work was up by 325,700 or 228.1% from the same quarter in 2019 and this led to a fall of 17.5 million or 22.3% in the number of hours worked in the reference week.

Table 7.4 below presents the number of persons absent from work during the reference week as a percentage of the numbers employed by economic sector for Q2 of 2019, 2020 and 2021. The overall rate of absence increased from 6.2% in Q2 2019 to 21.9% in Q2 2020 while employment fell by 6.9% between Q2 2019 and Q2 2020. In Q2 2021, the rate of absence was 9.4% and the level of employment rose by 9.9% from Q2 2020.

The differing impact of COVID-19 and public health restrictions over the two-year period are very evident from the table. The rate of absence for some sectors such as Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing, Industry and Information & Communications have not been overly affected by the pandemic as the rate of absence has not changed much over the period. However, the adverse effect of the pandemic on the rate of absence has been much more significant for other sectors and some notable examples are:

• The Accommodation & Food Sector services sector where the rate of absence was 6.6% in Q2 2019 and rose to 63.4% in Q2 2020 and stood at 21.5% in Q2 2021
• The Other activities sector which includes Arts, sports, entertainment and cultural activities where the rate of absence in Q2 2021 stood at 19.7% having increased from 6.3% in Q2 2019 and decreased from 49.8% in Q2 2020
• The Construction sector where the rate of absence was 9.3% in Q2 2021 having stood at 5.2% in Q2 2019 and 43.9% in Q2 2020

The number of hours worked per week in Q2 2021 in several sectors were close to 2019 levels and some of these sectors such as Public Administration and Defence or Agriculture, Forestry and Fishing were less likely to be impacted by the pandemic. However, the impact is much more evident in some other sectors and these were also the sectors which recorded the largest share of absences in Q2 2021. These included:

• The Accommodation & Food Sector where the number of hours worked per week was 2.9 million in Q2 2021 compared to 1.9 million in Q2 2020 and 5.4 million in Q2 2019
• The Construction Sector, where the number of hours worked per week was 5.6 million in Q2 2019 before falling to 2.6 million in Q2 2020 and then increasing to 4.5 million in Q2 2021
• The Other activities sector, which includes culture and recreation, where the number of hours worked per week fell from 3.5 million in Q2 2019 to 1.3 million in Q2 2020 before rising to 2.4 million in Q2 2021