14 March 2022
Go to release: Impact of COVID-19 Income Supports on Employees, - Insights from Real Time Administrative Sources, Series 3
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (14 March 2022) released an update of Impact of Selected COVID-19 Income Supports on Employees – Series 3. This report is the third in a CSO Frontier Series entitled ‘Insights from Real Time Administrative Sources’. Care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as the CSO Frontier Series may use new methods which are under development and / or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources. For further information see https://www.cso.ie/en/methods/ourpublishingformats/
The aim of this new series is to provide insights into Irish society using datasets from administrative systems and is an example of the policy-relevant research projects the CSO are developing as part of its leadership role in the Irish Statistical System.
Commenting on the release, Seán O’Connor, Statistician, said:
“This publication presents analysis of the impact selected COVID-19 Income Support Schemes had on the income of employees in Q3 2021. Employee earnings data from the Revenue Commissioners were combined with data on COVID-19 income support schemes from Revenue and the Department of Social Protection under the auspices of the Statistics Act, 1993 to provide the basis for this analysis. Note earnings and income are used interchangeably within this publication.
This report examines the extent to which employees’ median weekly earnings and income were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact selected COVID-19 income support schemes had on the income of recipient employees.
Those who never received income supports in Q3 2021 and Q3 2020 tended to have the highest median weekly income, followed by those who did not receive income supports in Q3 2021 but did in Q3 2020. Those who received income supports in Q3 2021 and Q3 2020 have the lowest median income, followed finally by those who received income supports in Q3 2021 but who did not in Q3 2020.”
Other main results include:
Proportion of cohorts in receipt and not in receipt of supports
Ages of cohorts
Income of cohorts
Income and age of cohorts who did and did not change employer between Q3 2020 and Q3 2021
This publication entitled ‘Impact of selected COVID-19 Income Supports on Employees’ is the third instalment of the ‘Insights from Real Time Administrative Sources’ Series. This CSO Frontier Series analysis uses new methods and data sources to measure the impact selected COVID-19 Income Support Schemes had on the earnings of Irish employees. The results presented in this publication are based on a number of data sources:
The linkage and analysis were undertaken by the CSO for statistical purposes in line with the Statistics Act, 1993 and the CSO Data Protocol.
Before using personal administrative data for statistical purposes, the CSO removes all identifying personal information including the PPSN. All data sources are pseudonymised prior to linking. The Personal Public Service Number (PPSN) is a unique number that enables individuals to access social welfare benefits, personal taxation, and other public services in Ireland. The CSO converts the PPSN to a Protected Identifier Key (PIK). The PIK is an encrypted and randomised number used by the CSO to enable linking of records across data sources and over time which is internal to the CSO. Using the PIK enables the CSO to link and analyse data for statistical purposes, while protecting the security and confidentiality of the individual data. All records in the datasets are anonymised and the results are in the form of statistical aggregates which do not identify any individuals.
Please Note: The data included in this publication are subject to revision as more information relating to employments and earnings for Q3 2021 are lodged by employers with the Revenue Commissioners and the data is subsequently made available to the CSO for statistical analysis purposes.
Users should see the Background Notes for information on the methodology and definitions used in the analysis.
Seán O’Connor (+353) 85 878 4994 (+353) 21 453 5295
or email sean.oconnor@cso.ie
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