Press Statement

Preasráiteas

19 February 2019

Go to release: Labour Force Survey (LFS) Quarter 4 2018

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (19 February 2019) issued results from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for Q4 2018. 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 Q4 2018, employment totalled 2,281,300, up 2.3% or 50,500 from the same quarter in 2017. When adjusted for seasonal factors, employment increased by 0.4% or 8,300 from Q3 2018.

There were 128,800 people unemployed in Q4 2018, and this was down 10.5% or 15,200 from Q4 2017. When seasonally adjusted, the unemployment rate remained at 5.7% over the quarter, while the seasonally adjusted number of persons unemployed increased very slightly to 135,900.

Long term unemployment, which refers to those persons unemployed for one year or more, accounted for 38.9% of total unemployment in Q4 2018.

In Q4 2018, the total number of persons in the labour force was up 1.5% or 35,300 to 2,410,100 from Q4 2017. The number of persons not in the labour force was 1,467,000 and that was up 1.6% or 23,600 from a year earlier”.

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