21 May 2020
Go to release: Labour Force Survey (LFS) Quarter 1 2020
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today 21 May 2020 issued results from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for Q1 2020.
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is the official source of labour market statistics for Ireland including the official measures of employment and unemployment. These official measures are based on the International Labour Organisation (ILO) concepts and definitions. The ILO measures are the international standard and all EU Member States are legally obliged to compile and provide this data to Eurostat on a quarterly basis. Please see the Information Note on the Impact of COVID-19 on the Labour Force Survey (Information Note on Implications of COVID-19 on the Labour Force Survey) for more information.
Commenting on the report, Jim Dalton, Statistician, said: ‘The COVID-19 pandemic has had a considerable impact on the Irish Labour Market and that impact started towards the end of Quarter 1 2020. As the CSO is obliged to follow standard definitions and methodology when calculating the official estimates from the Labour Force Survey (LFS), it has been decided to compile the Quarter 1 2020 LFS estimates in the usual way and provide separate COVID-19 Adjusted Estimates. This approach preserves the methodology of the LFS while at the same time providing transparency around the current impact of COVID-19 on the Labour Market within Ireland.
Using the standard International Labour Organisation (ILO) criteria, the unadjusted number of persons aged 15 years and over in employment stood at 2,353,500 in Q1 2020 with an associated Employment Rate of 69.8% for those aged 15-64 years.
When the effects of COVID-19 are taken into account, the COVID-19 Adjusted Measure of Employment, or lower bound of the number of persons aged 15 years and over in employment, is estimated to have been 2,070,371 at the end of March 2020 with an associated COVID-19 Adjusted Employment Rate of 61.1% for those aged 15-64 years.
Using the standard ILO criteria, the unadjusted number of persons aged 15-74 years who were unemployed in Q1 2020 stood at 114,400 with an associated Unemployment Rate of 4.7%.
On the 8 May 2020, as part of the Monthly Unemployment Estimates release for April 2020, the CSO published COVID-19 Adjusted Unemployment Volumes and Rates for the end of March 2020 which corresponded to 382,311 persons and 15.5% respectively for persons aged 15-74 years.
In Q1 2020, using the standard methodology, the total number of persons in the labour force was up 2.1% or 51,600 to 2,467,900 from Q1 2019. The number of persons not in the labour force was 1,490,500 and that was up 0.7% or 10,300 from a year earlier.'
For further information contact:
Jim Dalton, Labour Market Analysis – 086-678-0316
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