25 February 2021
Go to release: Labour Force Survey (LFS) Quarter 4 2020
See: Infographic
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (25 February 2021) issued results from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for Q4 2020.
Commenting on the report, Jim Dalton, Statistician, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic is continuing to have 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 4 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 fell by 2.3% or 55,000 to 2,306,200 in the year to Q4 2020. The greater rates of decrease in employment in specific sectors were in Administration & Support Services (-26.8% or -30,000) Accommodation & Food Services (-25.7% or -46,100) and Other NACE Activities (-15.3% or -18,100) which includes arts, sports, entertainment & cultural activities. The Employment Rate for those aged 15-64 years was 67.8% in Q4 2020.
Absences from work in the reference week (e.g. temporary layoffs from work, family leave and holidays) have had a significant effect on the number of hours worked in the economy. While the numbers in employment fell by 2.3% in the year to Q4 2020, absences from work in the reference week was up by 70.5% to 324,900 and this resulted in a fall of 8.5% or 6.6 million in the number of hours worked per week to a total of 70.8 million hours worked for the quarter. The impact on hours worked varied across the different economic sectors. The number of hours worked in several sectors in Q4 2020 such as Public Administration & Defence and Information & Communications were near Q4 2019 levels. However, absences as a share of employment were highest in other sectors such as Accommodation & Food Services, Other Activities (recreation and culture) and Transport & Storage and the hours worked in these sectors was significantly lower in Q4 2020 than the levels from a year earlier.
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 1,970,609 at the end of December 2020 with an associated COVID-19 Adjusted Employment Rate of 57.5% for those aged 15-64 years. By the end of January 2021, these are estimated to have stood at 1,826,567 and 53.1% respectively.
Using the standard ILO criteria, the unadjusted number of persons aged 15-74 years who were unemployed in Q4 2020 stood at 138,900 with an associated Unemployment Rate of 5.7%.
On 03 February 2021, as part of the Monthly Unemployment Estimates release for January 2021, the CSO published COVID-19 Adjusted Unemployment Volumes and Rates for the end of December 2020 which corresponded to 468,655 persons and 19.4% respectively for persons aged 15-74 years. By the end of January 2021, these are estimated to have stood at 607,190 and 25.0% respectively.
In Q4 2020, using the standard methodology, the total number of persons in the labour force was down 1.1% or 26,700 to 2,445,100 from Q4 2019. The number of persons not in the labour force was 1,546,600 and that was up 5.1% or 75,500 from a year earlier.”
Commenting on the importance of sampled individuals taking part in the LFS, Jim Dalton, Statistician, added: “Following public health guidelines regarding COVID-19, our interviewers no longer call to homes to conduct interviews but instead conduct them over the phone. Selected households will receive introductory letters by post asking them to ring to schedule an interview. These surveys give us a picture of the economic and social situation of the citizens of Ireland, in a way, and with a level of accuracy, that no one else can gain. If you are asked to take part in a CSO survey, please do so. It means that when CSO figures are quoted you know they’re accurate, Because you told us.”
Commenting on a complementary output also being released by the CSO today, Jim Dalton continued: “Alongside the LFS release today, the Labour Market analysis area of the CSO is also publishing the fifth series of the Labour Market Insight Bulletins. These new outputs are designed to provide additional insight into the effect of COVID-19 on the labour market in Ireland by providing high-level supplementary analysis to users alongside the standard labour market outputs and metrics. The data is sourced from the LFS, administrative datasets and linkage of these sources. The bulletin being published today is specifically designed to give some context to the standard LFS results for Q4 2020 (Labour Market Insight Series 5 Q4 2020).
Note to Editors
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. The methodology outlined in the Information Note published alongside the Q2 2020 LFS results on 24 August 2020 still applies to the LFS results for Q4 2020.
Please see Information Note - Implications of COVID-19 on the Labour Force Survey - Quarter 2 2020 Update
For more information - https://www.cso.ie/en/releasesandpublications/er/lfs/labourforcesurvey
For further information contact:
Jim Dalton, Labour Market Analysis – 087-678-0316
Email: labour@cso.ie
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