Employment in the tech sector falls by over 20,000

Facebook-owner Meta announced it was to cut 8,000 jobs with 350 redundancies expected in Ireland.

Employment in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector, which includes tech firms, declined by over 20,000 in the year to the end of March, as the overall number in employment across the country rose only marginally in that time, CSO data shows.

Over the last year, a number of multinational tech firms have announced significant layoffs across their global operations. 

In July last year, Microsoft announced it would cut 9,000 jobs, Accenture said it had cut 11,000 jobs, and Amazon said it would cut 30,000 jobs between announcements in October last year and January this year.

In addition, Facebook-owner Meta earlier this week announced it was to cut 8,000 jobs with 350 redundancies expected in Ireland.

According to the CSO, as of the end of March this year, there were approximately 169,200 people working in the ICT sector in Ireland — down by 20,300 or 10.7% — which is the largest decrease in employment across economic sectors.

The fall in employment in this sector alone was largely driven by jobs classified as “computer programming and consultancy” which accounted for 16,200 of the total reduction.

On the significant reduction in jobs in the ICT sector, Goodbody chief economist Dermot O’Leary said there has been a focus on the role of AI in the jobs market but this “weakness could also reflect a reversal of the boom in hiring during the covid period in particular”.

“Employment in the ICT sector in Ireland is still up by a third relative to its pre-covid level. That said, the impact of AI on the labour market will have to be carefully monitored,” he said.

The sector which recorded the largest increase in employment was construction, up 20,500 over the year. 

The transport and storage sector also saw an increase of 20,400.

Data from the CSO also showed that the number of people aged 15-89 years in employment rose by 400 to 2,794,500 in the year to the end of March.

Mr O’Leary said the Irish labour market “softened notably” at the start of the year with the second slowest annual rate of employment change — outside of the pandemic period — since the second quarter of 2012.

Mr O’Leary added that the higher employment rates in the construction sector was a positive trend which is needed to increase in housing supply.

The employment rate for people aged 15-64 years was 73.3%, down from 74.7% at the same point last year.

An estimated 561,500 or 20.1% of those in employment worked part-time, and 133,700 or 23.8% of those in part-time employment were classified as underemployed.

The total estimated number of hours worked per week during the first quarter of this year stood at 86.3m — a decrease of 0.2% year-on-year.

There was an estimated 1% decline in the number of people in employment to just under 2.4m, however, this was offset by an increase of 7.3% in people in self-employment which hit 379,000.

The number of people working from home fell by 44,800 during the first quarter to 990,100, compared to the same period in 2025. 

At the same time, those that never worked from home rose by 46,600, or 2.7% to just under 1.8m, exceeding the pre-pandemic level for the first time.

The number of people aged 15-74 years who were unemployed during the quarter stood at 141,800, with an associated unemployment rate of 4.9%. 

There were 41,300 people in long-term unemployment — unemployed for 12 months or longer — an increase of 15,500 year-on-year.