Emigration still prevalent despite strong jobs recovery
Last week saw the release of the data for the opening quarter of this year.
These figures give a detailed picture of the state of the Irish labour market, in terms of employment, unemployment, and the labour force, as well as migration flows.
Not only are the labour figures available by sex and age group, they also have a detailed breakdown by business sector and region.
Thus, they can tell us which sectors of the economy are performing well and how the various parts of the country are faring.
There can be striking differences in the data across sectors and regions.
The headline figures for the opening quarter of 2016 were again very impressive, maintaining the strongly improving trend evident over the previous three years.
Employment rose by 15,000, or 0.8%, in the quarter, although this figure was boosted by the recruitment of 4,500 temporary field staff for Census 2016.
It follows employment growth of 6,600 in quarter four and 9,400 in the third quarter of last year.
If we take the annual change in the year to the first quarter of 2016, then employment rose by 47,000, or 2.4%, little different from the 2.3% year-on-year increase recorded for the previous quarter.
Notably, female employment rose by 28,000, while male employment increased by only 19,000.
Most of the growth was in full-time employment, which rose by 31,000, with a gain of 16,000 in part-time employment.
The job gains were broad-based, with employment rising in 12 of the 14 sectors in the CSO survey.
Construction saw a large gain, with jobs growth of 9,500, or 9.3%, in the year, while the hospitality sector saw employment rise by 10,000, or 7.6%.
There were also good job gains in industry, transport, IT, and the public sector.
Not surprisingly, Dublin saw the biggest jump in employment, with an increase of 27,000, or 4.5%, thereby accounting for well over half of the job growth in the past year.
The West is the only region of the country that is continuing to see a fall in employment.
Notably, more than half of the rise in employment in the past year is accounted for by non-Irish nationals, even though they account for just circa 15% of the labour force.
Meanwhile, there was no change in the number of Irish nationals in the labour force in the past year, despite favourable demographic trends.
This indicates that, while overall migration flows may be coming more into balance, this is due to a net inflow of non-Irish nationals, with continuing, sizeable net emigration by Irish nationals.
Overall, total employment now stands at 1.99m, its highest level since early 2009.
It has now risen for 14 consecutive quarters, from its low point of 1.83m, in 2012. It could well rise above 2m over the summer.
The steady rise in employment, combined with the emigration seen in recent years, has resulted in a sharp fall in unemployment.
The jobless rate averaged 8.4% in quarter one, and is estimated to have fallen to 7.9% by April. This compares with a peak rate of 15.1%, reached in early 2012.
There are marked regional differences, though, with the quarter-one jobless rate at 5.9% in the mid-east and 6.9% in Dublin, compared to rates of 11.6% in the midlands and 12.5% in the south-east.
The CSO data shows the number of unemployed was 180,000 in the first quarter, down from 214,000 a year earlier, and a peak of 327,000 at the start of 2012.
Thus, unemployment has fallen by 34,000 in the past year.
On current trends, the jobless rate should have declined to 7% by the end of the year.
Meantime, the long-term unemployment rate fell below 5% in the first quarter.
However, despite all these favourable labour-market trends, the data suggests that a lot of Irish people are still choosing to emigrate in search of better job opportunities abroad.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
