Males represented 50.6% of all employments active for at least 50 weeks in 2024, while females represented 49.4% of all employments.
Males accounted for almost three in every four employments (72.4%) with earnings in the top 1%.
Since 2019 the proportion of females among the top 1% of earners increased from 22.6% to 27.6% in 2024.
The Public Administration & Defence sector had the highest proportion of female employments (38.5%) among the top 1% of earners in 2024, followed by the Human Health & Social Work sector (38.2%).
In 2024, Accommodation & Food Services recorded the largest annual increase in the proportion of female employments in the top 1% of earners (+10.3 percentage points). In contrast, the proportion of female employments in Administrative & Support Services with earnings in the top 1% decreased by 2.3 percentage points since 2023.
Dublin had the highest median annual earnings in 2024 at €49,224, which was 9.8% higher than those of the State at €44,816.
The disparity in median annual earnings was least for employments among males and females in Sligo (7.7%), while in Kildare median annual earnings among males (€54,689) were 29.6% higher than their female counterparts (€42,203).
While less than one-third (29.9%) of all employments were held by individuals residing in Dublin, over half (56.1%) of employments with earnings in the top 1% were held by those living in the region.
This publication provides distributional analysis based on the Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS) dataset by gender and county of residence. 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 of the reference year.
Please note that the Labour Force Survey is the official source of employment estimates.
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (02 October 2025) published Distribution of Earnings by Gender and County for 2024. Commenting on the data, Dr Eimear Heffernan, Statistician in the Earnings Analysis Division, said:
“This release presents distributional earnings analysis based on the Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS) dataset by gender and county of residence.
Gender Representation in Employments
In 2024, gender representation across total employments was relatively equal. Of employments active for at least 50 weeks of the year, males accounted for 50.6%, while females accounted for 49.4%. This compares with almost three-quarters of employments with earnings in the top 1% which were held by males (72.4%).
During the five-year period between 2019 and 2024, the proportion of female employments with earnings in the top 1% increased by five percentage points, from 22.6% in 2019 to 27.6% in 2024, the highest proportion of female employments in this earnings bracket since the series began in 2011. During the same period, the proportion of female employments with earnings in the top 10% rose from 27.9% in 2019 to 30.6% in 2024.
Males represented a higher proportion of the total employments in eight of the 13 economic sectors compared with their female counterparts, however they accounted for the majority of employments in the top 1% of earnings across all sectors in 2024.
Accommodation & Food Services recorded the largest annual increase in the proportion of employments among females in the top 1% of earners (+10.3 percentage points). In contrast, the proportion of employments among females in the Administrative & Support Services sector with earnings in the top 1% decreased by 2.3 percentage points between 2023 (27.0%) and 2024 (24.7%).
The greatest disparity between female representation in total employments and those in the top 1% of earnings occurred in the Human Health & Social Work sector. In 2024, females represented more than three-quarters (76.3%) of all employments in Human Health & Social Work, compared with 38.2% of employments among those with earnings in the top 1%. Similarly, females accounted for 73.1% of employments in the Education sector, while accounting for 35.7% of employments within the top 1% of earnings.
It is important to note that data in relation to hours worked is not available in the EAADS dataset, however data provided by the CSO's Labour Force Survey (LFS) can provide further context around average hours worked (See QLF25, QLF33, QLF36). Table QLF33 shows that in Q4 2024, males had higher average hours worked per week (38.4), compared with their female counterparts (32.0). A similar trend was observed across each quarter of 2024.
Earnings and Regional Disparity
In terms of the distribution of earnings by region of residence, Dublin had the highest median annual earnings in 2024 at €49,224. Dublin was followed by Kildare (€48,431), Wicklow (€46,527), Cork (€46,416), and Meath (€46,272), each of which had median annual earnings greater than those of the State (€44,816). The lowest median annual earnings were recorded in Donegal (€36,967), Monaghan (€37,867), and Longford (€38,857) in 2024.
The disparity in median annual earnings recorded for employments among males and females varied by county. In 2024, employments among males (€44,065) in Sligo recorded median annual earnings 7.7% higher than those among females (€40,911), while in Kildare median annual earnings among males (€54,689) were 29.6% higher than their female counterparts (€42,203). In general, greater disparity in annual earnings between employments among males and females was recorded for counties with the highest earnings in 2024.
In terms of the distribution of employments, the highest concentration of employments was recorded in Dublin in 2024, at 29.9%, compared with 5.7% of employments among those in the Midlands region. More than half of employments with earnings in the top 1% were held by those residing in Dublin (56.1%).”