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A Profile of COVID-19 in Ireland - Using Census 2016 Household Data to Analyse COVID-19 Waves, March 2020 - May 2021

Employment & Sector

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Employment & Sector

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Employment

Over half (56-57%) of confirmed cases were working for payment or profit, across all waves compared to 53% in the general population. In wave 1, 14% of cases stated they were retired from employment on Census night 2016, falling to 8% in wave 2 and then increasing again to 12% in wave 3.

In all waves, non-manual workers (22-23%%) were the socio-economic group with the highest proportion of COVID-19 cases. Cases in other socio-economic groups remained consistent across the waves.

In wave 1, 6% of matched cases were nurses and midwives and this proportion fell to 4% in waves 2 and 3. The most common occupation in both waves 2 and 3 was sales and retail assistants, cashiers and checkout operators at 6% of matched cases compared with 5% of all employees in April 2016

Dublin made up 35% of cases in work, school or college in wave 1 but fell to 28% by wave 3. Cases where the county of work, school or college are in areas of Ireland outside of the five cities rose from 41% in wave 1 to 51% in wave 3.

Sector

In Table 4.5, the CSO has used Revenue PAYE Modernisation (PMOD) system data to provide insight on employment status of COVID-19 cases. Using pseudonymised identifiers more than 80% of confirmed cases in the CIDR database could be linked to administrative data sources, and of these, approximately 50% had a record of employment. As well as the strict legal protections set out in the Statistics Act, 1993, and other existing regulations, we are committed to protecting individual privacy and all identifiable information from each of the data sources used in our analysis, such as name, date of birth and addresses, are removed before use and only anonymised statistical aggregates are produced.
By matching the month, the COVID-19 case is reported to a record of employment in that month (or most recently available record of employment, currently May 2021 for cases reported in April); a further adjustment has been made to account for those coming off the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) scheme). The results attempt to reflect the industry of an employee when they became a positive case in the CIDR system. However, this does not indicate that the case is linked to an outbreak in the workplace.

Health and social work was the sector hardest hit in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic making up 60% of cases amongst those employed in April 2020. Cases in this sector fell to 15% by August 2020 but rose again in wave 2 to 29% before they dropped in wave 3 to 11% in April 2021 following the roll-out of vaccinations.

As society reopened after the first lockdown in summer 2020, cases among those employed in the Wholesale & Retail Trade sector increased from 5% of cases in July to 17% in August 2020 and have remained consistently at this level since.

The impact of the reopening of different sectors of the economy can be seen in the Table 4.5. For example, there were more cases in those employed in the Education sector when schools reopened and in those employed in the Accommodation and Food Services Activity sector when restrictions around dining were relaxed.

Sector	Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing (A)	Industry (B-E)	Construction (F)	Wholesale & Retail Trade (G)	Transportation & Storage (H)	Accommodation & Food Service Activities (I)	Information & Communication (J)	Finance & Real Estate (K,L)	Professional, Scientific, Technical Activities (M)	Administrative & Support Service Activities (N)	Public Administration & Defence (O)	Education (P)	Health & Social Work (Q)	Other NACE Activities (R-U)	Unknown
April 20	0.26	6.83	1.26	6	2.47	1.67	1.87	3.55	2.52	4.35	4.45	2.31	59.54	1.73	1.1
May 20	0.67	23.92	0.82	3.46	0.91	1.3	1.3	2.11	1.3	4.56	3.31	2.35	52.59	1.10	0.3
June 20	2.41	12.05	4.22	7.83	1.81	2.41	3.61	1.81	4.22	2.41	3.01	3.61	48.8	1.81	0
July 20	0.72	14.75	7.19	5.4	1.44	4.32	2.88	5.04	5.04	10.79	2.88	1.8	35.97	1.80	0
August 20	0.41	22.95	6.31	17.38	2.05	6.31	2.87	3.61	5.49	7.62	2.95	3.11	15.33	2.62	0.9
September 20	0.48	9.93	5.34	15.74	3.18	9.6	4.23	6.84	5.91	6.33	6.24	5.31	16.73	3.12	1.0
October 20	1.2	11.23	5.39	16.7	3.05	9.9	2.79	5.08	4.81	4.89	6.74	6.91	16.26	3.70	1.3
November 20	0.83	11.46	4.59	14.82	2.92	5.19	2.59	4.12	3.87	6.72	4.79	5.35	28.99	2.36	1.4
December 20	1.18	9.32	5.51	13.88	3.14	8.41	3.45	5.56	5.94	4.95	6.19	8.01	19.98	3.05	1.4
January 21	1.03	10.17	5.13	15.03	3.69	4.75	3.22	5.74	5.51	5.48	6.55	6.12	23.39	2.49	1.7
February 21	1.67	12.14	5.6	16.93	4.96	4.9	2.81	4.89	5.17	7.33	5.3	4.44	19.71	2.41	1.7
March 21	0.74	13	6.64	16.42	4.41	5.74	3.47	5.33	5.15	8.01	6.55	7.06	12.49	2.77	2.2
April 21	1.11	11.6	8.01	19.74	4.03	5.37	3.82	4.51	6	8.18	5.06	6.5	10.57	2.60	2.8

Table 4.1 Covid-19 sample and general population by principal economic status as of April 2016
	% COVID sample
Principal Economic Status	Wave 1	Wave 2	Wave 3	% Census 2016 population
Working for payment or profit	56.0	56.8	55.9	53.4
Looking for first regular job	1.1	1.2	1.2	1.3
Unemployed	5.9	6.8	6.6	6.8
Student or pupil	12.8	15.7	11.9	11.1
Looking after home/family	5.9	7.1	8.0	8.1
Retired from employment	14.2	8.2	12.0	14.8
Unable to work due to permanent sickness or disability	3.8	4.1	4.2	4.1
Others not in labour force	0.3	0.1	0.2	0.4
Source: CSO

Open in Excel: Profile of COVID-19 2021 Table 4.1 (XLS 12KB)

Table 4.2 Covid-19 sample and general population by socio-economic group as of April 2016
	% COVID sample
Socio-Economic Group	Wave 1	Wave 2	Wave 3	% Census 2016 population
Employers and managers	15.7	16.8	16.2	14.0
Higher professional	6.7	6.1	5.4	6.0
Lower professional	15.1	12.8	12.6	13.0
Non-manual	21.2	22.1	21.8	21.0
Manual skilled	6.8	7.0	7.8	8.0
Semi-skilled	9.2	8.0	8.7	8.0
Unskilled	3.8	4.0	4.1	4.0
Own account workers	3.2	3.9	4.0	4.0
Farmers	2.0	1.9	2.0	4.0
Agricultural workers	0.3	0.4	0.4	0.5
All others gainfully occupied and unknown	16.0	17.0	17.0	18.0
Not stated	0.0	0.0	0.0	0.0
Source: CSO

Open in Excel: Profile of COVID-19 2021 Table 4.2 (XLS 12KB)

Table 4.3 COVID-19 sample and general population by top occupations affected as of April 2016
	% COVID sample
Occupations	Wave 1	Wave 2	Wave 3	% Census 2016 population
Nurses and midwives	6.1	4.3	4.4	2.0
Care workers and home carers	4.4	4.4	4.2	2.0
Sales and retail assistants, cashiers and checkout operators	4.3	5.2	6.2	5.0
Nursing auxiliaries and assistants	4.2	2.1	2.2	1.0
Other administrative occupations	2.3	3.0	3.1	3.0
Primary and nursery education professionals	1.0	1.2	2.0	1.0
Farmers	2.1	3.2	3.3	3.0
Cleaners and domestics	2.3	2.3	2.1	1.0
Medical practitioners	2.0	2.4	1.4	1.0
Kitchen and catering assistants	0.4	2.1	2.2	1.0
Food, drink and tobacco process operatives	1.2	1.0	1.1	1.0
Source: CSO

Open in Excel: Profile of COVID-19 2021 Table 4.3 (XLS 9KB)

Table 4.4 Sample and population by county of work, school or college as of April 2016
	% COVID sample
County of work, school or college	Wave 1	Wave 2	Wave 3	% Census 2016 population
Dublin	35.3	30.3	28.1	29.0
Other cities	24.1	21.2	21.3	21.0
Rest of Ireland	41.0	49.4	51.4	50.0
Source: CSO

Open in Excel: Profile of COVID-19 2021 Table 4.4 (XLS 10KB)

Table 4.5 COVID-19 cases by Sector using Revenue PAYE Modernisation (PMOD) system data
	2020									2021
Sector	April	May	June	July	August	September	October	November	December	January	February	March	April
Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing (A)	0.3	0.7	2.4	0.7	0.4	0.5	1.2	0.8	1.2	1.0	1.7	0.7	1.1
Industry (B-E)	6.8	23.9	12.0	14.8	23.0	9.9	11.2	11.5	9.3	10.2	12.1	13.0	11.6
Construction (F)	1.3	0.8	4.2	7.2	6.3	5.3	5.4	4.6	5.5	5.1	5.6	6.6	8.0
Wholesale & Retail Trade (G)	6.0	3.5	7.8	5.4	17.4	15.7	16.7	14.8	13.9	15.0	16.9	16.4	19.7
Transportation & Storage (H)	2.5	0.9	1.8	1.4	2.1	3.2	3.1	2.9	3.1	3.7	5.0	4.4	4.0
Accommodation & Food Service Activities (I)	1.7	1.3	2.4	4.3	6.3	9.6	9.9	5.2	8.4	4.8	4.9	5.7	5.4
Information & Communication (J)	1.9	1.3	3.6	2.9	2.9	4.2	2.8	2.6	3.5	3.2	2.8	3.5	3.8
Finance & Real Estate (K,L)	3.6	2.1	1.8	5.0	3.6	6.8	5.1	4.1	5.6	5.7	4.9	5.3	4.5
Professional, Scientific, Technical Activities (M)	2.5	1.3	4.2	5.0	5.5	5.9	4.8	3.9	5.9	5.5	5.2	5.1	6.0
Administrative & Support Service Activities (N)	4.4	4.6	2.4	10.8	7.6	6.3	4.9	6.7	5.0	5.5	7.3	8.0	8.2
Public Administration & Defence (O)	4.5	3.3	3.0	2.9	2.9	6.2	6.7	4.8	6.2	6.6	5.3	6.6	5.1
Education (P)	2.3	2.4	3.6	1.8	3.1	5.3	6.9	5.4	8.0	6.1	4.4	7.1	6.5
Health & Social Work (Q)	59.5	52.6	48.8	36.0	15.3	16.7	16.3	29.0	20.0	23.4	19.7	12.5	10.6
Other NACE Activities (R-U)	1.7	1.1	1.8	1.8	2.6	3.1	3.7	2.4	3.1	2.5	2.4	2.8	2.6
Unknown	1.1	0.3	0.0	0.0	0.9	1.0	1.3	1.4	1.4	1.7	1.7	2.2	2.8
Source: CSO

Open in Excel: Profile of COVID-19 2021 Table 4.5 (XLS 11KB)

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A Profile of COVID-19 in Ireland - Using Census 2016 Household Data to Analyse COVID-19 Waves, March 2020 - May 2021

Employment & Sector

A CSO Frontier Series Output

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