According to the Central Statistics Office (CSO), in the second quarter of 2023, the number of employed people in the state rose to another record high despite a worsening economic outlook.
The agency’s latest Labor Force Survey showed the number of people officially classified as employed rose by 2.64 million between April and June.
This is up from 88,400 or 3.5 percent over the same period last year.
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One of the key factors is increasing women’s employment and increasing women’s participation in the labor force.
The employment rate for women was 70.5 percent, the highest since the series began in 1998. The female participation rate was 61 percent.
The participation rate is a measure of the economy’s active workforce, in other words, those working and those looking for work.
The Republic has traditionally lagged behind its peers in terms of the proportion of women working, but more women have taken up roles in the labor market during the pandemic, which has been linked to an increased incidence of remote work.
While the CSO figures are a series of high-tech job losses here, employment in the sector is up 8,500 year-over-year to 173,400.
The Irish economy continues to perform strongly in the face of domestic and international headwinds. The sector that saw the largest year-over-year growth in employment in a recent report was public administration and security; Mandatory social security, an increase of 14,200 or 11.2 percent. In contrast, employment in agriculture, forestry and fisheries fell by 6,600, or 6.3 percent.
121,200 people were classified as unemployed in the second quarter, up from 4.5 percent in the same quarter of 2022 to 4.4 percent.
In the second quarter of 2022, there was an increase of 1.1 million hours, or 1.3 percent, to 84.1 million hours.