Employment trends - Skilled jobs will change Irish society

If the economy continues to grow as it did between 1991 and 2005, the trend would suggest that employment as a whole will increase but the extra jobs will be mainly in skilled occupations.

In the industrial era, people were hired for their physical attributes, but in the information age more people are being hired for their brain power.

The ESRI report published yesterday is based on the premise that employment could grow by as much as 17.7% or as little as 10.2%. Whether it is high or low, the existing trend in favour of higher skilled employment is likely to continue, while there should be moderate increases for skilled manual occupations, but unskilled jobs — particularly in agricultural occupations and in unskilled manual categories — will experience the lowest rate of growth.

Education is the key. Girls and young women have been outperforming their male counterparts academically in both secondary school and third-level institutions, so women are likely to benefit most.

Employment in legal, business and other professions is expected to expand by 33% to 42%.

It is anticipated that 30% of the women in the workforce will fill positions in professional or associate professional jobs in law, medicine, business and finance by 2012, while only 20% of men will be in the same category.

That should lead to a dramatic change from the current situation, where women are grossly under-represented in managerial jobs and chief executive positions. Society needs to tease out the social implications of such change, especially in crucial matters like child-minding.