Press Statement

Preasráiteas

21 May 2019

Go to release: Labour Force Survey (LFS) Quarter 1 2019

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (21 May 2019) issued results from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for Q1 2019. This survey replaced the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) from the beginning of Q3 2017.

Commenting on the report, Jim Dalton, Statistician, said: “The LFS is the official source of data for employment and unemployment in Ireland. Key findings show that in Q1 2019, employment totalled 2,301,900, up 3.7% or 81,200 from the same quarter in 2018. When adjusted for seasonal factors, employment increased by 1.5% or 35,200 from Q4 2018.

There were 114,400 people unemployed in Q1 2019, and this was down 14.0% or 18,600 from Q1 2018. When seasonally adjusted, the unemployment rate decreased from 5.6% to 5.0% over the quarter, while the seasonally adjusted number of persons unemployed decreased by 14,300 to 120,300.

Long term unemployment, which refers to those persons unemployed for one year or more, accounted for 35.7% of total unemployment in Q1 2019.

In Q1 2019, the total number of persons in the labour force was up 2.7% or 62,600 to 2,416,300 from Q1 2018. The number of persons not in the labour force was 1,480,200 and that was up 0.7% or 9,900 from a year earlier”.

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