This is a new publication which aims to provide insightful analysis in terms of employment and earnings by the nationality of enterprise ownership in Ireland, by combining a variety of labour market and earnings products, including Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data Sources, Labour Market Churn, and Earnings Analysis using Adminstrative Data Sources.
This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources.
The number of employees whose primary employment was with Irish-owned enterprises rose by 0.4% in the month to November 2024, which was an annual increase of 2.9%. This compares with a monthly increase of 0.1% and annual increase of 0.5% for foreign-owned enterprises.
In Q3 2024 job churn, which is the overall turnover of staff, was 365,750. Irish-owned enterprises accounted for 78.3% (286,388) of the job churn, while foreign-owned enterprises accounted for 21.7% (79,270).
In 2023, Irish nationals accounted for 76.6% of employments in Irish owned-enterprises and 65.5% of employments in all foreign-owned enterprises.
In 2023, almost half (44.5%) of employments within Irish-owned enterprises had weekly earnings of less than €600, compared with less than one-third (28.3%) of employments in foreign-owned enterprises.
Median weekly earnings were highest among Indian nationals in employment in both Irish-owned enterprises (€792.59) and foreign-owned enterprises (€1,096.05) in 2023.
Please note the difference between the terms employees and employments, used throughout this release, and the different methodology used to determine these terms. It is possible for an employee to have multiple employments in a given reference period.
The number of employees whose primary employment was with Irish-owned enterprises increased by 0.4% in the month to November 2024 to 1,877,800. This was an annual increase of 2.9% from November 2023. The number of employees whose primary employment was with foreign-owned enterprises rose by 0.1% in the month to November 2024 to 618,700, which was an annual increase of 0.5%.
On an annual basis the number of female employees whose primary employment was with Irish-owned enterprises increased by 2.8% to 975,300, while those employed by enterprises owned by foreign-owned enterprises rose by 0.6% to 263,400. The number of male employees whose primary employment was with Irish-owned enterprises grew by 3.0% to 906,400, while those employed by foreign-owned enterprises increased by 0.4% to 354,800.
Between November 2023 and November 2024, the number of employees in the 20-24 years, 25-34 years and 35-44 years age groups whose primary employment was with Irish-owned enterprises increased by 4.0%, 2.2%, and 0.8%, respectively. Annual decreases were seen in number of employees in these age groups employed in foreign-owned enterprises (-1.9%, -1.6%, and -0.6%). The overall annual growth in number of employees in foreign-owned enterprises owned by EU multinationals (1.3%) was higher in November 2024, compared with the growth in number of employees in foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals (0.2%).
Also of note was the reduction in number of employees across both Irish (-1.4%) and foreign-owned (-5.9%) enterprises among those aged 15-19 years in the year to November 2024.
The total number of jobs created in Q3 2024 was 142,528, an increase of 11,597 (8.9%) when compared to a year previous. Jobs created by Irish-owned enterprises accounted for 87.8% (125,071) of all jobs created in Q3 2024.
There were 119,706 job destructions in Q3 2024, an increase of 17,371 (17.0%) when compared with a year previous. The number of jobs destroyed was highest among Irish-owned enterprises which accounted for 88.2% (105,628) of the total figure.
Job churn rate for Irish-owned enterprises in Q3 2024 was 13.1%, a decline of 1.4 percentage points when compared with a year earlier. All foreign-owned enterprises saw a fall of 1 percentage point, from 12.8% in Q3 2023 to 11.8% in Q3 2024.
Employments in Irish-owned enterprises accounted for almost three-quarters of all employments in 2023, at 74.9%, while employments in foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals accounted for a further one-fifth (19.8%). A similar trend in proportions was observed in the number of employees presented in Table 1.1. In 2023, median weekly earnings were highest among employments in foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals (€906.74), followed by foreign-owned enterprises owned by EU multinationals (€789.07), while the lowest median weekly earnings were recorded among employments in Irish-owned enterprises (€654.41). A similar trend was recorded for median weekly and annual earnings across the years analysed (2020–2023).
Despite greater annual percentage increases in weekly earnings among female employments, employments among males had higher median weekly earnings in each nationality of enterprise ownership category, compared with their female counterparts. An annual increase of 6.3% was recorded in median weekly earnings among female employments in foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals, from €707.04 in 2022 to €751.59 in 2023. The largest annual increase in median weekly earnings among male employments was also recorded among employments in foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals, at 5.3%, from €994.18 in 2022 to €1,046.46 in 2023.
In terms of median annual earnings, employments in foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals (€54,765) had earnings 34.7% higher than those in Irish-owned enterprises (€40,647). While male employments in foreign-owned enterprises owned by EU multinationals (€54,104) had earnings 25.1% higher than those in Irish-owned enterprises (€43,264), the difference in earnings among female employments in the corresponding enterprises was less considerable (2.2%).
Overall median weekly earnings and employments increased annually by 4.2% and 2.6%, respectively, between 2022 and 2023, however there was variability depending on the nationality of enterprise ownership and the nationality of the employee. For example, the number of Irish nationals employed in foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals enterprises decreased by 2.6%, since 2022. Conversely, Irish nationals had the highest annual increase in median weekly earnings in foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinational, rising by 7.2% in 2023. Similarly, employments among Indian nationals in foreign-owned enterprises owned by EU multinationals increased by 33.8% since 2022 but median weekly earnings have fallen by 2.0%.
An annual decrease in employments in foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals between 2022 and 2023 was also recorded among United Kingdom nationals (3.3%) and Lithuanian nationals (2.6%). Nationalities with higher annual employment growth in 2023 included Ukraine (67.3%), India (28.6%), and Brazil (17.4%), mainly driven by increased employments in Irish-owned enterprises.
In 2023, foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals had the highest median weekly earnings of €906.74 increasing by 5.6% since 2022. Within foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals, Indian nationals had the highest median weekly earnings at €1,166.85 (+2.8%), followed by United Kingdom nationals at €1,070.01 (+5.7%) and Irish nationals at €963.28 (+7.2%). Employments among Irish-owned enterprises had the lowest median weekly earnings in 2023 at €654.41. Among Irish-owned enterprises, Ukrainian (€425.74), Brazilian (€486.05), and Lithuanian (€575.52) nationals had the lowest median weekly earnings in 2023.
In 2023, a greater proportion of employments among Irish-owned enterprises were at the lower end of the earnings distribution, when compared with their foreign-owned counterparts. The age profile of employments did not appear to have a significant impact on the distribution of earnings by nationality of enterprise ownership. Youth employments (15-24 years) accounted for 15.5% of employments in Irish-owned enterprises, compared with 12.3% and 12.2% of foreign-owned enterprises owned by EU multinationals and foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals, respectively. A similar proportion of employees in this age cohort was reflected in Table 1.2A above. More than two in five employments within Irish-owned enterprises (44.5%) had weekly earnings of less than €600, compared with less than one-third of employments in foreign-owned enterprises (28.3%) in 2023. In contrast, more than one in ten employments in foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals (10.7%) had weekly earnings of €2,400 or more, while two in 100 employments in Irish-owned enterprises had similar earnings.
The proportion of employments within Irish-owned enterprises fell with increased earnings. A smaller proportion of employments in Irish-owned enterprises had weekly earnings in the 90th percentile (61.8%) compared with the 10th percentile (95.3%). The 90th earnings percentile refers to the employments with earnings in the top 10%, while the 10th percentile refers to employments with earnings in the bottom 10%. In 2023, the difference in proportion of employments in Irish-owned enterprises between the 10th and 90th earnings percentiles stood at 33.5 percentage points. This compares with a difference of 21.9 percentage points three years previous in 2020. Foreign-owned enterprises accounted for almost two-fifths (38.1%) of employments in the 90th earnings percentile in 2023, of which 31.4% were foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals and 6.7% were foreign-owned enterprises owned by EU multinationals.
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (06 February 2025) published Employment and Earnings Insights by Nationality of Enterprise Ownership for 2023 and 2024.
Commenting on the release, Conor Delves, a statistician in the Labour Market section of the Labour Market & Earnings Division of the CSO, said: “This is a new publication which aims to provide insightful analysis in terms of employment and earnings by the nationality of enterprise ownership in Ireland, by combining a variety of labour market and earnings products, including Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data Sources (MEPEADS), Labour Market Churn (LMC) and Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS). The release is part of the CSO’s ‘Frontier Series’, and therefore the methodology and data are subject to revision. Each product referred to in the release analysis uses its most recently available data and is subject to revision in future iterations.
Estimate of Employees
The number of employees whose primary employment was in Irish-owned enterprises stood at 1,877,800 in November 2024. This was an increase of 2.9% on November 2023. In comparison, the number of employees whose primary employment was in foreign-owned enterprises was 618,700 in November 2024. Annual growth in employee numbers was slightly higher among males (3.0%), compared with their female counterparts (2.8%) in Irish-owned enterprises.
Labour Market Churn
The job churn rate among Irish-owned enterprises in Q3 2024 was 13.1%, a decrease of 1.4 percentage points when compared with Q3 2023. The job churn rate among all foreign-owned enterprises fell by 1 percentage point, from 12.8% in Q3 2023 to 11.8% in Q3 2024. Job churn is a measure of employee turnover providing insight into the number of employees who changed job and stayed in the same job. You can learn more about job churn in the labour market in a separate CSO release.”
Earnings
Dr Eimear Heffernan, a statistician in the Earnings Analysis section of the Labour Market & Earnings Division of the CSO, said: "In terms of earnings, the highest median weekly earnings were recorded among employments in foreign-owned enterprises owned by non-EU multinationals (€906.74), followed by employments in foreign-owned enterprises owned by EU multinationals (€789.07), while the lowest median weekly earnings were recorded among employments in Irish-owned enterprises (€654.41). In 2023, almost half (44.5%) of employments within Irish-owned enterprises had weekly earnings of less than €600, compared with less than one-third of employments in foreign-owned enterprises (28.3%).
Median weekly earnings among Irish nationals tended to be higher than non-Irish nationals across all nationality of enterprise ownership categories in 2023. However, the range in earnings by individual nationality was considerable. Median weekly earnings were highest among Indian nationals in employment in both Irish-owned enterprises (€792.59) and foreign-owned enterprises (€1,096.05) in 2023. In contrast, median weekly earnings of €425.75 and €538.26 were recorded among Ukrainian nationals employed in Irish-owned and foreign-owned enterprises, respectively.”