Press Statement

Preasráiteas

16 November 2018

Labour Force Survey Employment Series

Go to release: LFS Employment Series Q2 2018

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (16 November 2018) issued a further detailed breakdown and further disaggregation of employment data from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) in respect of the second quarters of 2012 to 2018. Whilst the headline totals have previously been published by the CSO, these breakdowns and aggregations published today offer considerable additional insight to these headline totals.

Commenting on the report, Jim Dalton, Statistician, said: “The LFS is the official source of data for employment in Ireland. Some key findings show that in Q2 2018, the proportion of persons who gave the reason for being in part-time employment as Person could not find a full-time job was 16.7% (76,400 persons). This compares with Q2 2012 when 36.4% or 164,900 gave this reason for being in part-time employment.

Today’s release also includes a detailed breakdown of the average usual hours worked per week. Of the fourteen economic sectors, the Agriculture, forestry and fishing sector had the highest average at 50.4 hours per week in Q2 2018 with the Education sector having the lowest at 30.1 hours per week.

Self-employed persons usually worked an average of 45.2 hours per week in Q2 2018, while the corresponding number for employees was 35.2 hours. The average for persons in full-time and part-time employment was 40.8 and 18.8 hours per week respectively. 

In Q2 2012, the proportion of employees who reported not being a permanent employee because the Person could not find a permanent job was 53.0%. The corresponding figure in Q2 2018 was 28.4%.

The detailed sectoral distribution of employment shows that the Retail trade, except of motor vehicles and motorcycles sector, accounted for 9.4% of all persons in employment in Q2 2018 while the Education sector accounted for 7.4%.

Finally, the number of persons in full-time employment in Q2 2018 accounted for almost 80% of all employment – up from the figure of 75.9% recorded in Q2 2012”.

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