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.
On 26 September 2024 Q2 was published where we updated the methodology. The data in this publication does not reflect these updates. For updated data please see Labour Market Churn Q2 2024 or PxStat.
Job churn in Quarter 1 (Q1) 2024 was 323,734, down 16,192 (4.8%) from Q1 2023. The associated job churn rate for Q1 2024 was 11.8%, down 0.8 percentage points from the 12.6% recorded a year earlier.
The total number of jobs created in Q1 2024 was 101,767 a decrease of 34 (-0.0%) when compared with Q1 2023. This was the lowest number of job creations since Q2 2020.
There were 121,122 job destructions in Q1 2024, which was 24,907 (-17.1%) fewer than the number recorded 12 months earlier.
The 263,634 hirings recorded in Q1 2024 were 8,130 (-3.0%) fewer than the 271,764 observed in Q1 2023, and the lowest number of hirings in the last three years.
In Q1 2024 a total of 282,989 job separations were recorded, down 33,003 (-10.4%) from the 315,992 observed in Q1 2023.
There were 235,489 separations from primary employments in Q1 2024. Of these, 108,198 (45.9%) people were no longer on the Revenue PMOD system, 82,917 (35.2%) were employed but in a different economic sector, and 44,374 (18.8%) remained employed in the same economic sector but with a different organisation or company.
There were 2,466,867 people who stayed in their current employment, or stayers, in Q1 2024. This was the highest figure for stayers in the current series.
People who remain in the same job are referred to as stayers; those who take up a new employment are referred to as hirings; and those who leave an employment are called separations.
If an enterprise has more hirings than separations in a quarter, then it is said to have had job creations, with the net difference between hirings and separations being the number of job creations.
Conversely, if an enterprise has more separations than hirings in a quarter, then it is said to have had job destructions, with the net difference between separations and hirings being the number of job destructions.
Job creations and job destructions are a net figure based on hirings and separations at enterprise level. In a given time period, an enterprise experiences either job creations, no change, or job destructions.
Job churn is a measure of employee turnover that captures employee job matches over and above the minimum that would be required to accommodate total labour market growth or decline. In simpler terms, it is a measure of employee turnover providing insight into the number of employees who changed job and stayed in the same job.
Job churn rate measures job churn relative to total employment. Examples
Company A had 10 hirings and six separations in a time period. It therefore had a job creation figure of four.
Company B had 20 hirings and 40 job destructions in a time period. It therefore had a job destruction figure of 20.
Primary employment refers to the main job of employees who have more than one employment (See Background Notes for more information).
| Table 1.1 Job Creation, Destruction, Churn, and Churn Rate, Quarterly and Annual Changes | ||||
| Job Creation | Job Destruction | Job Churn | Job Churn Rate | |
| Q1 2023 | 101,801 | 146,029 | 339,926 | 12.6 |
| Q4 2023 | 111,405 | 150,787 | 400,414 | 14.4 |
| Q1 2024 | 101,767 | 121,122 | 323,734 | 11.8 |
| Quarterly Change | -9,638 | -29,665 | -76,680 | -2.6 |
| Annual Change | -34 | -24,907 | -16,192 | -0.8 |
| Source: CSO Job Churn | ||||
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (31 May 2024) issued Labour Market Churn results for Q1 2024.
Labour Market Churn is a Frontier publication. It uses Revenue PMOD data to provide insights on employee turnover within the labour market. The publication contains figures on employees who stay in their current job, those who leave an employment, and those taking up new jobs. It also provides breakdowns of the employee turnover figures by economic sector and firm size.
In addition, while the release does not capture the reasons behind employee job moves, it does detail whether job leavers remained employed in the same economic sector, a different sector, or left PMOD employment.
The series covers the time period from Q2 2020 to the current quarter, Q1 2024. For definitions of the terminology used in the release, please see the Editor’s Note below.
Commenting on today’s release, Conor Delves, Statistician in the Labour Market Analysis Section, said:
The job churn figure for Q1 2024 was 323,734, this is a decrease of 16,192 from Q1 2023. The job churn rate, that is the job churn figure relative to total employment, for Q1 2024 was 11.8%, down 0.8 percentage points from the 12.6% recorded in Q1 2023.
There were 101,767 job creations in Q1 2024 and 121,122 job destructions in the same period.
In Q1 2024, one in ten employees was no longer in an employment that they held in the quarter prior.
The largest year-on-year increase in job creations in Q1 2024 were seen in Public Administration & Defence, where creations were up 114.9% to 7,817 and Education, where creations rose 95.0% to 7676.
In Q1 2024, the highest job churn rate was recorded in the Administrative & Support Service sector (24.9%), while the lowest rate (7.3%) was recorded in the Industry sector.
The firm size group that saw the highest job churn rate in Q1 2024 was the 50-249 group (14.4%). The lowest job churn rate in the quarter was in firms with between 1 and 9 employees (6.1%)"