Impact of Selected COVID-19 Income Supports on Employees - Insights from Real Time Administrative Sources, Series 1

This new report, ‘Impact of selected COVID-19 Income Supports on Employees’, is the first in a new series from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on ‘Insights from Real Time Administrative Sources’. This new Frontier Series aims to provide insights into Irish society using newly available datasets from administrative systems and is an example of the policy-relevant research projects the CSO are developing as part of its leadership role in the Irish Statistical System. The goal of the CSO is to maximise the variety and volume of data available to provide high quality information to the Government, businesses and citizens, through the development of a National Data Infrastructure (NDI).

The NDI plays an integral part in facilitating the CSO to develop new and improved statistical products for the benefit of citizens and policymakers. Under the auspices of the Statistics Act 1993, and in compliance with all relevant data protection legislation, the CSO is in a unique position to gather and link administrative data sources held by Government departments and agencies and evaluate their potential for statistical use.

The demand for data and insight into Irish society continues to grow unabated. The growth is not just apparent in terms of broad range of themes (e.g. globalisation, productivity and well-being) that Official Statistics are being asked to provide information on but also in relation to the level of detail being required in the analysis. It is clear that the range and depth of demand cannot be met from survey data alone but through analysis of new data sources including administrative records held by public sector bodies.

New developments in the Department of Social Protection (DSP) and the Revenue Commissioners in recent years have facilitated the production of real time datasets which are now available for analysis. The Business Objects Model Implementation (BOMi) system, implemented by DSP in 2013, reports weekly welfare incomes on a consistent basis across all of the schemes operated by the Department. The Revenue’s PAYE Modernisation (PMOD) payroll system has been operational for all employers in the State since 1 January 2019, replacing the annual P35 data collection. Under the new system, employers are required to report their employees’ pay and deductions in real time to Revenue each time they operate their payroll. Prior to analysis in CSO, these datasets are pseudonymised with all identifiers removed and a Protected Identification Key (PIK) is placed on them to facilitate linking. When combined, these two datasets provide up to date incomes for most working age and older people and are available for statistical analysis on a continuous basis. This opens the possibility for new approaches to data analysis which previously were not possible using employer and employee sample surveys.

To provide an insight into what is possible from linking these two data sources, Figure 2.1 shows an age and sex breakdown of 3.6 million individuals who had employment or welfare engagement in September 2020. These individuals are segmented into cohorts based on whether they appear only from one source or are found in both sources. Individuals can appear on both the PAYE and welfare systems as, for example, many working families receive child benefit payments and individuals may be in receipt of both occupational and state pensions. In total, 3.6 million people were covered by these systems in September 2020, with 1.59 million on the PAYE system only, 1.17 million on the welfare system only and 0.86 million on both systems. Child and adult dependants on social welfare claims are not included in this count of 3.6 million people.

 

This publication utilised administrative data sources to analyse the impact selected COVID-19 Income Support Schemes had on the earnings of employees in Ireland in the first three quarters of 2020. Administrative data on employee earnings, from Revenue, were combined with administrative data from Revenue and DSP on selected COVID-19 income support payments to employees. These supports include the Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP), the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) and the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS). Employees were categorised into groups based on whether they were Recipients or Non-Recipients of the above supports.

Earnings and support income were analysed for these groups to illustrate how employees were affected financially by COVID-19. This analysis also showed the financial help these income supports provided to employees.

Employee earnings is defined as earnings from paid employment in this report, while employee income is defined as earnings from paid employment plus selected COVID-19 income supports.

The Results and Analysis chapter contains three sections, each with a distinct approach.

Section 1 is based on a panel of employees who were either at work or in receipt of a COVID-19 income support throughout the period Q1 2019 to Q3 2020. This allows an analysis of a consistent group of persons tracked over the period.

Section 2 and 3 focuses on the annual percentage change from a quarter in 2019 to the same quarter in 2020. The people included in this analysis are limited to those who were present in both quarters, as an employee or a COVID-19 income support recipient who had been an employee at some stage in this time period. This means there is a different cohort of employees being analysed in each period comparison. This approach was chosen to remove the effect that compositional changes can have on earnings statistics and to isolate the specific impact COVID-19 income supports have had on employee earnings.

Please Note: The data included in this publication are subject to revision as more information relating to employments and earnings for Q3 2020 are lodged by employers with the Revenue Commissioners and the data is subsequently made available to the CSO for statistical analysis purposes.  

Users should see the Background Notes for information on the methodology and definitions used in the analysis.

Go to next chapter:Results and Analysis