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Key Findings

Almost 75% of the top 1% of earners were male in 2022

Online ISSN: 2990-8353
CSO statistical publication, , 11am

Key Findings

  • Males represented 51.3% of all employments active for at least 50 weeks in 2022, while females accounted for 48.7% of all employments.

  • Among those with annual earnings in the top 1%, 74.8% were male and 25.2% were female. Of those in the top 10% of earners, 70.3% were male and 29.7% were female and in the top 25% of earners, males were 61.8% and females were 38.2%.

  • From 2012-2022, the proportion of females in the top 1% of earners increased from 18.7% to 25.2% and the proportion of females in the top 10% of earners increased from 28.8% to 29.7%. However, during the same period the proportion of females in the top 25% of earners decreased from 39.3% to 38.2%.

  • Males represented the majority of all employments in eight economic sectors, and at minimum 65.0% of those in the top 1% of earners in every economic sector.

  • There was relatively equal gender representation in employments across all age groups. Both mean and median annual earnings among females peak at an earlier age than among males.

  • In 2022, Dublin had the highest mean (€60,804) and median (€46,136) annual earnings while the lowest mean (€39,156) and median (€33,523) annual earnings were recorded in Donegal.

Statistician's Comment

The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (12 December 2023) issued Distribution of Earnings by Gender and County for 2022.

Commenting on the data, Dr. Eimear Heffernan, Statistician in the Earnings Analysis Division, said: 

“This publication provides distributional earnings analysis based on the Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources dataset by gender and county.

Earnings and Employment Sector

In 2022, gender representation across all employments was relatively equal. The figures show that of all employments active for at least 50 weeks in 2022, males represented 51.3% and females represented 48.7%. In contrast, among those with annual earnings in the top 1%, 74.8% were male and 25.2% were female. In the top 10 % of earners, 70.3% were male and 29.7% were female and in the top 25% of earners, males were 61.8% and females were 38.2%.  

The proportion of females in the top 1% of earners has increased by 6.5 percentage points from 18.7% in 2012 to 25.2% in 2022. During the same period, the proportion of females in the top 10% of earners increased by 0.9 percentage points from 28.8% to 29.7% while the proportion of females in the top 25% of earnings decreased by 1.1 percentage points from 39.3% to 38.2% over the ten years from 2012 to 2022.

Males represented a higher proportion of the workforce across all employments in eight of the 13 economic sectors, while they accounted for the majority (74.8%) of the top 1% of earners across all sectors.

The greatest disparity between female representation in employments and those in the top 1% of earnings occurs in the Education and Health sectors. In 2022, females represented 72.5% of all employments in the Education sector. However, 29% of employments among those with earnings in the top 1% of this sector were represented by females. Similarly, females represented 76.5% of the Human Health & Social Work sector, while occupying 35% of employments within the top 1% of earnings.

There was relatively equal gender representation in employments across all age groups. Both mean and median annual earnings among females peak at an earlier age than among males.

Regional Differences

In terms of regional distribution, Dublin had the highest median annual earnings at €46,136, while the lowest median annual earnings were recorded in Donegal at €33,523.

The highest median annual earnings were in Dublin across seven of the 13 economic sectors, where annual earnings ranged from €27,197 in Accommodation & Food Services to €82,103 in Information & Communication. Similarly, the Information & Communication sector had the highest median annual earnings in 17 counties in 2022. The lowest median annual earnings in nine economic sectors were recorded in Donegal, where annual earnings ranged from €18,574 in Arts, Entertainment, Recreation & Other Services to €53,337 in the Education sector.

Annual earnings varied among age groups. Lowest median annual earnings were recorded among those in the 15-24 years age group, while those in the 40-49 years age cohort had the highest median annual earnings across all counties.”

Editor's Note

This publication provides distributional analysis based on the Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS) dataset by gender and county. It presents earnings statistics compiled based on administrative data sources. The primary data source is the Revenue Commissioner’s employee tax data. This is linked to the CSO Business Register and other data to provide economic and demographic breakdowns of employee earnings in Ireland. The data used for this analysis has been restricted to employments that were active in the month of October 2022.

The Wage Subsidy Schemes include the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme (TWSS) which was active for part of 2020, and the Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme (EWSS) which was active for part of 2020, all of 2021 and part of 2022.