Tech layoffs lead to 2,300 Irish job losses, Central Bank estimates

The tech sector provide 164,000 jobs in Ireland, up by 29% since 2019

Global layoffs by the multinationals so far have had limited effect on the large tech employment pool in Ireland, but illustrate the risks the Irish economy faces in relying on a handful of large companies, the Central Bank has said. 

Its research comes after Google, Meta-owned Facebook, Microsoft, Twitter, Dell, and Hewlett Packard have been among the multinationals to announce jobs losses estimated by the Central Bank to have led to over 2,300 job cuts in Ireland in recent months, as they shrink their global workforces for the first time in many years.

In its research on the ICT, or information and communications tech employers, the Central Bank highlights the outsized role they play here, in terms of the jobs they provide, the wages they pay, and the billions in corporation tax revenues delivered to the exchequer. 

The ICT giants provide 164,000 jobs in Ireland, up by 29% since 2019, and have shed over 2,300 jobs in the current downturn, the Central Bank has estimated. 

The tech giants also account for an average of €1,535 in weekly earnings -- compared with €897 across the economy -- and also account for a large amount of corporation tax receipts.           

According to the Central Bank, at 18,000, Amazon of the big employers based here has announced the largest number of global layoffs, but it is not known whether it will lay off people in Ireland.

Alphabet-owned Google has announced 12,000 global job cuts of which 240 are in Ireland; Meta's Facebook has announced 11,000 global cuts of which 350 jobs are in Ireland; while Microsoft will let go 10,000 people of which 120 jobs are in Ireland, according to the bank's tallies.  

"To date, the scale of the downturn affects a small proportion of overall ICT employment in Ireland. Nevertheless, the dependency of the sector on a small number of large firms illustrates the wider structural vulnerability of the Irish economy to firm or sector specific downturns," according to the Central Bank research. 

"Nevertheless, there is uncertainty over the future growth prospects for the sector and there remains a risk that the downturn that emerged in 2022 could become more severe," it said in the research.