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Labour Force Survey, Quarter 3 2022

24 November 2022 - 13:45 pm


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On November 24th 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. 2,554,300 people were employed in this quarter: an increase of 83,000 on Q3 2021. The increase in full-time employment accounted for 97% of the increase in employment. For the second quarter in a row over two million people are in full-time employment in Ireland. The employment rate was 73.2%, an increase of one percentage point over the year. Women accounted for 40.7% of people in full-time employment in Quarter 3 in both 2021 and 2022.   

Part-time employment increased by 0.4% to 535,500. Women accounted for 68% of people in part-time employment. Part-time underemployment decreased by 0.7% to 109,300 people, however it increased for women by 5.9% to 68,300. In Q3 2022, women accounted for 62% of people who described themselves as underemployed.

Over the year the Labour Force rose by 53,100 to 2,673,400. The labour force consists of people who are in employment plus people who are unemployed. Two factors influence changes in the Labour Force, the demographic effect, which was positive (+60,300); and the participatory effect, which was negative (-7,200).

The participation rate in Q3 2022 was 64.8%, a decrease of 0.3 percentage points on the Q3 2021. The participation rate measures the share of the total population aged 15 years and over who are in the labour force. Over the year the participation rate decreased for women from 59.8% to 58.9%, but for men it increased slightly, from 70.5% to 70.8%. The participation rate for people aged 15-24 decreased over the year by 2.8 percentage points to 54.3%. People aged 60-64 saw the biggest increase in their participation rate, going from 55.3% in Q3 2021 to 60.2% in Q3 2022.

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 may 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.