More women in workplace ‘would create 65,000 jobs’
In An Overview of the Irish Labour Market, Rory O’Farrell of the Nevin Economic Research Institute finds that, like much of the rest of Europe, a gap in participation between the sexes begins to occur most frequently at age 30-34, typically coinciding with the birth of a first child.
“However, it is after the age of 35 that Ireland performs less well (for female participation) compared to the rest of Europe,” he said.
Such is the gap between this country and the rest of the EU15 countries for over-35s that, overall, there is a 5% gap in female participation, the economist said.
“The number of women aged between 15-65 years here is 1.5m,” he said. “The difference in female participation in the workforce between Ireland (62%) and the EU 15 (67%) is 5%. 5% of 1.5m is 75,000. When you allow for the fact that some of the people in the labour market will be unemployed, that reduces the number of people who will be employed to 65,000.”
Mr O’Farrell blames the gap both on poor childcare options and on a lack of middle-paying jobs.
On the former, he said: “The key solution has to involve access to childcare, making it more affordable. There are two issues with regard to the cost of childcare. One is the direct cost of employing someone per hour to have your child looked after.
“The other is family- friendly work practices. If you are in an occupation such as retail or the low-paid service sector, these people have very irregular rosters. So it is very difficult for them to plan childcare effectively. That can lead to higher cost.
“The area where lots of women are working is the public sector which is a lot more family friendly in terms of work practices. By increasing family-friendly work practices such as parental leave and also giving some form of subsidy to childcare, those two policies would make it worth the while for women to stay in the labour market.”
On the issue lack of middle-paying jobs, he said: “What has happened across the world and also in Ireland is that there tends to be job creation at the higher paid jobs and some job creation at the lower end, for example people working in accommodation or retail sector.
“However, middle-paying jobs such as clerical jobs are either not growing as fast or else are being shed.
“In Ireland during the construction boom, in a way this was hidden, because you had lots of middle-paying construction jobs. However, when the recession came in, it showed that these middle-paying jobs such as clerical jobs were disappearing”.
He said a greater focus on producing middle-paying jobs, particularly in the public service, could draw women back into the labour force, not least because the remuneration would make childcare more affordable.
Mr O’Farrell concluded by pointing out that getting more women to re-enter the workforce would be of benefit to the economy.
“As the population gets older we need more people to participate in the labour market,” he said.
“Those people can either come from aged 65-plus, or we could try and increase participation for those under 65. Given that the big difference between Ireland and EU is with regard to people aged under 65 and particular women, they would be the ‘low-hanging fruit’. It would be better to get people in the prime of their working life in the labour market rather than people aged 65-plus.”
