In Q4 2019, the total number of people in employment was 2.4m, which fell to a low point of 2.2m in Q2 2020. By Q2 2021, employment numbers had exceeded the pre-pandemic level (2.3m) and as of Q4 2024, there were 2.8m people in employment.
Youth employment (15–24-year-olds) had the sharpest decline, down over 25% between Q4 2019 and Q2 2020. Employment recovered to pre-pandemic levels for all age groups by Q3 2021.
Over the course of the pandemic, almost 1.5 million people received COVID-19 income supports. Over 1 million people received income support in April 2020, the highest number in any month.
The introduction of the Government’s Wage Subsidy Scheme in 2020 had the biggest impact on the Accommodation & Food Services sector with total labour costs falling by 51.2% in the year to Q4 2020. It was Q1 2022 before these costs returned to pre-pandemic levels.
In the five years to Q4 2024, average hourly earnings have grown by 24.7% and all economic sectors have seen increases in average hourly earnings. Average hourly total labour costs have also risen across all sectors over that time and are now 26% above their pre-pandemic Q4 2019 level.
The first significant impact on air passenger numbers occurred in March 2020 when 58% fewer passengers travelled through the five main airports in Ireland (Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Knock, Kerry).
In April 2020, just over 25,000 passengers passed through the five main airports, which was 99.2% lower than the 3.3 million passengers in April 2019.
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (19 March 2025) published COVID-19 – Our Lives Five Years On: Impact on Employment, Earnings, and Air Travel.
This is the second in a series of planned CSO releases to mark the impact of the pandemic on Irish society and on aspects of our economy five years after its onset. In this release, our Labour Market & Earnings Division examine CSO data to provide insight on employment and earnings trends over this period, while our Travel Division explore air travel data.
The first release in this series, which was based on a CSO Pulse Survey conducted between 16 January and 02 February 2025, COVID-19 – Our Lives Five Years On: Interrupted Education, was published on March 12, 2025. The third and final release in this series, which is also based on the Pulse Survey and entitled COVID-19 – Our Lives Five Years On: Social Impact, will be published on 25 March 2025.
Commenting on employment using the Labour Force Survey, Colin Hanley, Statistician in the Labour Market & Earnings Division, said: “The effects of the pandemic on employment numbers were different depending on what sector you worked in. The largest fall in employment occurred in the Accommodation & Food Services sector, where employment fell 38.0% between Q4 2019 and Q2 2020 or by 68,700 fewer people. The next largest decrease was in Administrative & Support Services (-22.3%) over the same period, or 25,000 fewer people.
Interestingly, two economic sectors, Financial, Insurance & Real Estate Activities and Information & Communication, saw no decline in the numbers of people in employment during the pandemic.
In terms of recovery, most sectors returned to their Q4 2019 levels of employment between Q1 2021 and Q3 2021, with the exception of Administrative & Support Services and Accommodation & Food Services, where numbers in employment did not recover to pre-pandemic levels until Q3 2022 and Q3 2023 respectively (See Table QLF03.) The Labour Labour Force Survey Quarter 4 2024 showed that the number of people aged 15-89 years in employment was 2.8 million, up 2.6% or 70,000 more people compared with Q4 2023. This is the highest level since the series began in 1998.”
Commenting on income supports put in place by the Government during the pandemic, Conor Delves, Statistician in the Labour Market & Earnings Division, said: "A range of measures were introduced by the Government to provide income support for those whose employment was affected by the pandemic in Ireland.
The first such support schemes was the COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) on 16 March 2020, which provided a social welfare payment to those who lost their employment because of the pandemic. These payments were not recorded as part of earnings. This was followed by the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) (26 March 2020 – 31 August 2020) and the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) (01 September 2020 – 31 May 2022), which were administered by the Revenue Commissioners. These payments enabled employees to receive supports directly from their employer through the payroll system.
Over the course of the pandemic almost 1.5 million people received some form of COVID-19 income support.
The high point in terms of numbers of people in receipt of income supports was April 2020 for PUP reaching a total of 605,676 and June 2020 for TWSS at 475,404 people.
In February 2022, the last month in which it was available, 53,804 people received PUP. The final Revenue administered supports were made in May 2022, when 98,549 people received EWSS payments (See LRM20).
Looking specifically at employees in the Air Transport sub-sector of the broader Transportation & Storage economic sector, we can see they were impacted heavily by the pandemic. Figure 2.1 below shows the growing proportion of Air Transport employees who claimed COVID-19 income supports (PUP, TWSS or EWSS) over the course of the period. As a percentage of the whole Transportation & Storage sector, Air Transport employees increased from less than 10% of those claiming Government income supports in March 2020 to over more than 25% of the total by April 2022. While part of this continuous increase would have been a reflection of other sub-sectors within the Transportation & Storage sector reopening earlier than others, it shows the sustained impact of the COVD-19 pandemic on the Air Transport sub-sector over this period."
Commenting on earnings, Louise Egan, Statistician in the Labour Market & Earnings Division, said: "The COVID-19 pandemic had a significant impact on earnings and labour costs. Government restrictions were introduced in response to the crisis for a number of sectors and three main schemes were put in place by the Government to support those whose income was affected as a result of the pandemic. These schemes are described in detail in the Employment section above. Refunded payments to enterprises, which were amounts received by them to refund part or all of the cost of wages and salaries, were deducted from other labour costs.
Looking at pre-pandemic Ireland, average hourly earnings rose by 3.9% across all economic sectors in the year to Q4 2019, with increases ranging from +1.4% in the Transportation & Storage sector to + 6.6% in the Arts, Entertainment, Recreation & Other Service Activities sector.
Average hourly total labour costs, or the cost of employing labour, went up by 4.6% in the same period, with increases ranging from +1.1% in the Transportation & Storage sector to +7.4% in the Arts, Entertainment, Recreation & Other Service Activities sector.
Following the introduction of government restrictions and the significant fall in employment from Q1 to Q2 2020, it is interesting to note that average hourly earnings across all sectors rose by 2.5%, while average hourly total labour costs fell by 3.3%.
The impact of the pandemic on each economic sector was different, particularly as the composition of the labour market changed significantly, with significantly fewer employments in certain sectors. Looking at Q4 2020, average hourly earnings went up by 5.5% across all sectors. Accommodation & Food Services, which was significantly impacted by the change in the composition of employment, saw the greatest annual increase of 14.6% in hourly earnings. The Transportation & Storage sector was the only sector in 2020 where there was an annual decrease in average hourly earnings for each quarter, down 7% in the year to Q4 2020.
In total, eight out of 13 economic sectors saw a decline in the average hourly cost of employing labour in the year to Q4 2020. The introduction of the Government’s Wage Subsidy Scheme in 2020 had a significant impact, as the payments to enterprises were deducted from their labour costs. The biggest impact was on the Accommodation & Food Services sector where total labour costs fell by 51.2% in the year to Q4 2020. It was Q1 2022 before these costs returned to pre-pandemic levels. In fact, the three most impacted sectors were Accommodation & Food Services (-51.2%), Arts, Entertainment, Recreation & Other Service Activities (-21.2%), and Transportation & Storage (-18.8%). At the same time, average hourly total labour costs went up by 10.5% in the Information & Communication sector.
Average hourly earnings grew by 2.8% in the year to Q4 2021, at which time all economic sectors, except for Accommodation & Food Services, had recovered to their pre-pandemic employment levels. As employment in this sector grew in 2021, average hourly earnings fell annually by 4.6%. It is worth noting that Q3 2021 was the first quarter in which average hourly earnings rose on an annual basis for the Transportation & Storage sector since Q4 2019.
Average hourly total labour costs rose annually by 8.6% across all sectors in 2021. While all sectors saw an increase in average total hourly labour costs in the year to Q4 2021, this rose by 99.5% in the Accommodation & Food Services sector from €7.39 to €14.74, due to the compositional effect as employees returned to work and the application of the criteria of the support schemes.
The EWSS ended for all enterprises and employees on 31 May 2022 and average hourly total labour costs reached pre-pandemic levels for the Accommodation & Food Services sector in Q1 2022.
As the labour force recovered and continued to grow in the post-COVID-19 period, so too did average earnings, with preliminary estimates for Q4 2024 showing an annual increase of 6.2% in average hourly earnings across all sectors.
In the five years to Q4 2024, average hourly earnings have grown by 24.7% and all economic sectors have seen increases in average hourly earnings. The smallest five-year increase in average hourly earnings was in the Transportation & Storage sector (+8.5%), followed by Education (+17.8%). The largest five-year increase was in the Information & Communication sector (+35.3%), followed by Administrative & Support Services (+26.5%).
Average hourly total labour costs have also risen across all sectors in this five-year period and are now 26% above their pre-pandemic Q4 2019 level."
Commenting on air travel, Damien Lenihan, Statistician in Transport Division, said: “Restrictions on travel introduced as a result of the pandemic had a dramatic and immediate impact on passenger numbers at the country’s five main airports, Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Knock, and Kerry.
By March 2020, the number of passengers handled by the five main airports had fallen by 58%, and by April 2020, just 25,286 passengers passed through these airports, which was 99.2% lower than the 3,232,744 passengers handled by these airports in April 2019. Figure 4, which charts the monthly number of passengers handled by all main airports in Ireland from 2019 to November 2024, shows passenger numbers were affected for about two and half years.
Following the initial fall in March and April 2020 and the subsequent rise in passenger numbers from May of that year, the number of passengers handled by the five main airports contracted once more from the beginning of 2021. There were 98,127 passengers handled in February 2021, which was a reduction of 95.8% on February 2020 (See Table TAM08 - Passengers handled by main airports).
When looking at the monthly figures for 2021, only about one in ten (11.1%) of total passengers used these airports in first six months of the year, compared with 47.1% of total passengers handled in 2019 during the first six months.
It was August 2022 before a single month achieved 90% of its pre-pandemic passenger handling figure (4,018,066 in August 2019 compared with 3,608,290 in August 2022), and January 2023 before a single month surpassed its pre-pandemic levels (2,417,073 in January 2023 compared with 2,388,377 in January 2020). The most recent Aviation Statistics for Quarter 4 and Year 2023 show that more than 39.2 million people used the five main airports in 2023, which was the highest number of passengers recorded since the series began in 2013."
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