Survey of Income and Living Conditions 2022
The Survey of Income and Living Conditions (SILC) is a household survey, undertaken by the Central Statistics Office (CSO), that provides the data from which key national poverty indicators are derived. The poverty indicators include: the at risk of poverty rate; the consistent poverty rate; and rates of enforced deprivation.
On November 23 rd 2022, the CSO published the enforced deprivation results from the SILC 2022. Eleven items are used to assess if people are experiencing deprivation or not, these include: unable to afford to replace any worn out furniture; unable to afford new (not second hand) clothes; unable to afford to have family or friends for a drink or a meal once a month; unable to afford to keep the home adequately warm; unable to afford a meal with meat, chicken, fish (or vegetarian equivalent) every second day.
It is important to note that these questions focus on a household’s ability to afford something or not, not on what they would chose to do. So, for example, some people may choose to buy second hand clothes rather than new ones, for personal or environmental reasons.
Enforced deprivation was higher in 2022 in comparison to 2021, an increase of 3.3 percentage points to 17.1%. One of the ways the CSO breaks this data down further is by Principal Economic Status, and according to this breakdown “ persons that are most likely to be living in enforced deprivation are the unemployed (45.0%), followed by those unable to work due to long-standing health problems (42.7%)” .
The data is also categorised by household composition, and under this heading the household experiencing the highest enforced deprivation were households with one adult and children aged under 18, with a rate of 45.4%. The household with the next highest rate were single adults aged less than 65, with a rate of 25.1%.
There was also a marked contrast between people living in rented or rent free accommodation vis-à-vis owner occupiers, with the CSO noting that “ Renters over three times more likely to be living in enforced deprivation than those in owner-occupied homes” . The deprivation rate for people living in rented or rent-free accommodation was 34.1% in 2022.
The CSO also asked people to rate how they perceived their own ability to make ends meet. 5.7% of households said they had a great difficulty in making ends meet in 2022. The CSO noted that “ Of households experiencing enforced deprivation, more than nine in ten (93.7%) had at least some difficulty in making ends meet, with 23.8% having great difficulty.”
Labour Force Survey Quarter 3 2022
On November 24 th 2022, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) published the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for the third quarter of 2022, which covers the months July to September. In Q3 2022, 119,100 people were unemployed: a decrease of 30,000 people over the year. The unemployment rate was 4.5%, a decrease of 1.2 ppt over the year. The unemployment rate for women was 4.8%, an annual decrease of one percentage point; while the unemployment rate for men decreased by 1.5 ppt over the year. Women accounted for 47% of the unemployed in Q3 2021, but this increased to 50.1% in Q3 2022.
The number of people deemed long-term unemployed decreased by 33% to 30,200 people, while the long-term unemployment rate decreased by 0.6 percentage points to 1.1%. In Q3 2022, the long-term unemployed accounted for 37% of the overall unemployed figure, an increase of seven percentage points. In Q3 2022 women accounted for 41% of the long-term unemployed, the same as the third quarter in 2021.
The Principal Economic Status (PES) captures data on how people described themselves, for example whether they are at work or unemployed or a student or on home duties. In Q3 2022, 158,200 people described themselves as unemployed, a decrease of 27,500 on Q3 2021.
The Potential Additional Labour Force (PALF) captures people who do not fit into the official definition of unemployment, whereby people have to be actively seeking work for the previous four weeks and available to take up work in the coming two weeks of the survey. In Q3 2022 PALF stood at 73,100 people, a decrease of 32,900 over the year. In their release, the CSO noted that the two main reasons for people not seeking work or being available to work as a percentage of persons who wanted to work but were not seeking or available for work were that (i) people had an illness or disability; or (ii) had care responsibilities / personal family reasons. These two reasons were higher in Q3 2022 in comparison to the third quarter in 2021 and 2020.