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 seasonally adjusted employee index increased by 6.4% in the 12 months to September 2022. The female employee index increased by 6.7%, while the male index increased by 6.0% for the same period.
All age groups saw annual increases in the employee index. The highest increases were in those aged 65 years and over (+12.5%) and those aged 15-19 years (+12.4%).
The age groups 15-19 and 20-24 years saw a monthly decrease in the employee index of 0.8% and 0.3% respectively. All other age groups increased on a monthly basis.
The Accommodation & Food Services Activities sector saw an annual increase of 18.1% in September 2022. When compared with pre-pandemic levels in September 2019, the sector increased by 8.2%.
Data for two additional aggregated sectors are provided: Tourism Industries and Cultural & Creative Industries. These sectors saw increases in their indices of 15.6% and 2.7% respectively in September 2022 when compared with September 2021.
A review of the seasonal models was carried out this month, September 2022. The review updated model parameters for some series which gave rise to revisions in the seasonally adjusted output when compared with previous months’ published outputs. Similar reviews may be carried out more than once a year due to the additional care required in seasonally adjusting short time series.
The Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data (MEPEAD) release is a very short time series (three and a half years of monthly data) and is thus at the lower limit of acceptable length for the seasonal adjustment process. In the short term, care should be taken in interpreting the seasonally adjusted output. Users should be aware that there is increased uncertainty around the seasonally adjusted figures during the COVID-19 period due to the volatility of the data. Non-seasonally adjusted data are available on PxStat.
MEPEAD is published as a 'Frontier' release, therefore the methodology and data are subject to revision. As more data become available, due to later transmissions from employers, the series may change from month to month. As this particularly affects the most recent months, figures should be considered provisional for the two most recent months for the non-seasonally adjusted data.
Percentage changes in the MEPEAD publication are calculated prior to rounding. As such, there may be minor differences between these and percentages calulated using the rounded figures in the publication text and PxStat tables.
| Number of Employees and Employee Index, Monthly and Annual Changes, Seasonally Adjusted | |||||||
| Period | Number of Employees | Employee Index (Base year: 2019=100) | Monthly % Change | Annual % Change | |||
| September 2021 | 2,192,200 | 101.8 | 1.2 | 6.9 | |||
| August 2022 | 2,323,400 | 107.9 | -0.5 | 7.2 | |||
| September 2022 | 2,331,500 | 108.2 | 0.3 | 6.4 | |||
The seasonally adjusted index increased by 9.2% in September 2022 when compared with September 2019. March 2021 was the last month to show a negative annual change (-10.8%) for the employee index when compared to the previous year.
The female and male indices increased on an annual basis by 6.7% and 6.0% respectively. Both females (0.6%) and males (0.4%) increased in September 2022 when compared with August 2022.
The age groups that saw the largest monthly decrease in the seasonally adjusted employee index were the 15-19 year-old group (-0.8%) and the 20-24 year-old group (-0.3%). The 65 years and over age group saw the largest monthly increase in September 2022 (+2.2%), with the 60-64 age group showing the second highest increase in September (+0.9%).
The Arts, Entertainment, Recreation & other Service Activities sector showed the largest decrease in the seasonally adjusted monthly index (-0.8%). The largest monthly increase was seen in the Education sector (+1.5%), followed by the Transportation & Storage sector (+0.9%).
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (16 November 2022) released Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data September 2022.
Commenting on the release, John Mullane, Statistician in the Labour Market & Earnings Division, said:
“All NACE economic sectors showed increases in the numbers employed on an annual basis. The largest increase (+18.1%) was seen in the Accommodation & Food Services Activities sector. This was followed by the Services (T,U) sector at 10.3% - it should be noted that this is the smallest sector (4,400 employees). The Arts, Entertainment, Recreation & Other Service Activities sector saw an annual increase of 4.9% from September 2021 to September 2022. However, this sector decreased by 3.7% over the three years from September 2019 to September 2022 and is the only NACE sector with an index value lower than September 2019.
The age group 25-34 years recorded the smallest increase in the employee index when comparing September 2019 with September 2022 at 3.7%.
The highest increases in this three-year period were noted in the following age groups: 37.3% for 15-19 years, 23.2% for 65 years and over, and 15.6% for 60-64 years.”
Data from this publication supplement those in the LFS quarterly series, which is the official measure of both employment and unemployment for the State. MEPEAD data are of particular relevance to LFS Seasonally Adjusted Estimates and Employment outputs.