Tech employment widens in Ireland to defy global layoffs 

Numbers employed in tech sector in Ireland swelled to 125,900 in February, up from 118,900 a year earlier

CSO figures show the number of people employed increased by 96,200 to 2.41m in the year to February. 

Employment in all parts of the Irish economy has grown over the last year, including in the technology sector despite multinationals announcing large cuts to their global workforces.

Over the last several months, major US corporations such as Twitter, Stripe, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have all announced major layoffs but the number of people employed in the information, communication and technology, or ICT, sector in Ireland has swelled to 125,900 in February, up from 118,900 a year earlier.

This news comes following an announcement by Facebook’s parent company Meta that another 50 of its employees in Ireland are being let go, mainly from the company’s recruitment team. That is in addition to the 350 people who were made redundant at Meta in Ireland as part of their first round of job cuts.

However, the number of people employed across the whole economy increased in the year by 96,200 to 2.41m, according to the February estimates of payrolls from the Central Statistics Office.

The Monthly Employee Index increased by 4.2% in the 12 months to February 2023https://t.co/6XAaUnod6u#CSOIreland #Ireland #LabourForce #IrishFamilies #IrishHouseholds #LabourMarket #Jobs #Employment #Unemployment #PayrollEmployees #PayrollEstimates #Employees pic.twitter.com/awlW4ejkBk

— Central Statistics Office Ireland (@CSOIreland) April 21, 2023

All economic sectors reported increases in the employee index, with the financial, insurance, and the property sector reporting the highest increase of 10.5% compared to February 2022. This sector employs about 125,400 people, the figures show. The next highest increase was in the accommodation and food services sector, followed by the tourism sector.

Wholesale and retail trade

Of all the economic sectors surveyed, the sector for wholesale and retail trade, which includes auto repairs, employed the largest number of people at 378,500, an increase of 2% in the year. 

The Central Statistics Office index also shows the number of women employed grew faster than men over the course of the year — 4.6% compared to 3.9%. 

There is no doubt that Ireland has not been immune from the fallout of the large number of layoffs across the the ICT giants in recent months. 

The ICT multinationals employ 164,600 people in Ireland, an increase of almost 30% since before the onset of the pandemic, which marked a huge global recruitment drive by the US giants of tech workers.          

The Central Bank had estimated that by the end of February, the ICT giants announced 87,330 global layoffs, of which almost 2,310 layoffs could land in Ireland. 

Since then, official data, forecasts from the Government and independent economists, as well as anecdotal evidence, suggest the tech layoffs are having little long-lasting effect as the Irish economy continues to expand at a rapid clip.

The Department of Finance in its major update last week projected that unemployment would likely stay at about 4.5% this year, a level which it noted was widely considered as indicating full employment in the economy.         

Meanwhile, the payroll data showed an increase in employment across all age ranges, and pointed to a trend of more older people being in employment. The demographic with the largest increase, of just over 11% from a year earlier, was for people of retirement age at 65 and over. The next largest increase, of 6.3%, was for people people aged 60 to 64.