In 2023, Irish nationals accounted for 73.8% of the employments market, followed by Poland at 3.4% and the UK at 2.8%. In terms of total weekly earnings, Irish nationals registered 76.6% of total weekly earnings in 2023, those from the UK were second at 3.3%, and Indian nationals made up 2.9% of total weekly earnings from employments.
There has been significant growth and change to Ireland’s employment market over the previous five years. The employments market has increased 13.8% since 2018. The share of those with Irish nationality in employment has dropped 5.2% percentage points since 2018, however, the number of Irish nationals in the labour market has risen by 6.3% during the same period. The three largest increases of those employed over the last five years were among those from Ukraine (+879.0%), India (+264.1%), and Brazil (+107.2%). Nationals from Poland and Lithuania have both seen a decrease in employments over the five-years from 2018-2023, down 8.3% and 4.4% respectively (See Table 2.1).
Table 2.2 below provides a breakdown on the growth of mean and median weekly earnings over a five-year period by nationality in employments, the distribution of age, and earnings by age for each nationality.
Between 2018-2023, nine out of ten nationalities in Ireland experienced wage growth. Brazilians experienced the highest wage growth in median weekly earnings at 51.2%, followed by Lithuanians at 30.6%, and Romanians at 29.9%. Spanish workers had the lowest growth in weekly median earnings between 2018-2023 at 12.6% while Ukrainians weekly earnings fell by 18.2%. This decline in Ukrainian median earnings was largely due to the compositional effect of age and economic activity as a result of the influx of Ukrainian refugees which is evident in the distribution of age and the breakdown of economic activity in the next section.
In 2023, nationals from India, the UK, Ireland, and Italy had weekly median earnings higher than the national median of €699.28. People from Brazil and Ukraine had the lowest weekly median earning of €514.15 and €450.29 (See Table 2.2).
Figure 2.1 presents the annual earnings distribution of nationalities by 10 deciles and includes only employees who worked 50 or more weeks in the year. The graph illustrates nationalities that have a wide distribution of earnings such as those from Ireland, Italy, and the UK, and nationalities that have narrowly distributed earnings such as those from Lithuania, Poland, and Romania. The line connects the annual median income of each nationality.
There are numerous factors that influence earnings including education, occupation, full-time/part-time status, hours worked, economic sector and age. As some of these variables are not available on the tax revenue (PMOD) file, it is not possible to analyse the influence of all these effects on earnings in this release so there will be a focus on age, economic sector and hours worked. The latter of which will be sourced from the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
Younger people’s wages tended to be lower and as age increased, earnings rose. However, this is not a linear relationship, and at a certain point, wages began to decrease. In this case, that point was for the 50-59 years age group and median weekly earnings continued to decline into the over 60 years age group. The primary earning years peaked between those aged 40-49 years for the majority of nationalities with the exception of Romanian nationals whose earnings peaked in the 30-39 years age group (Figure 2.2).
The age groups with the highest weekly median earnings in employment were the 40-49 years age group (€855.40), followed by the 50-59 years age group (€804.26), and the 30-39 years age group (€807.69). The lowest median weekly earnings were in the 15-24 years age group (€353.44) and the 60 years and over age group (€620.45). In the 40-49 years age group the nationalities with the highest earnings were: Indian, Irish, and from the UK. In the 15-24 years age group the nationalities with the highest weekly median earnings were: Spanish, Romanian and Italian (See Tables 2.3A & 2.3B).
Due to the nature of economic migration, non-Irish national populations tended to have lower proportions of younger and older people in employment. This is evident in Figure 2.3A which show Non-Irish national employee populations were more concentrated with less age distribution whereas the age distribution of Irish nationals in employment was more evenly distributed. This is also similar for UK nationals. In 2023, eight out of ten nationals from India and Brazil working in Ireland were aged under the age of 40 years while for Irish nationals five out of ten employees (46.4%) were aged under 40 years (See Figure 2.3A).
Providing a further breakdown of the 15-24 years age group into 15-19 years and 20-24 years, nationalities with lower median weekly earnings tended to have more employments in the 15-19 years age group or a higher proportion of their 15-24 years age group in the younger 15-19 years cohort. This was the case for the workers from Ireland and Ukraine. This younger cohort were more likely to be students and worked less hours thus affecting weekly earnings (See Figure 2.3B).
As hours worked significantly influenced weekly earnings, Tables 2.4A and 2.4B below utilise data from the LFS to deepen our understanding into the factors driving weekly earnings. The tables present the proportion of hours that each age group worked for Irish nationals and non-Irish nationals in Q4 2023. For example, the tables show that a higher proportion of Irish nationals aged 15-19 years worked less hours than non-Irish nationals which in turn will reduce median weekly earnings for this age group with 32.4% of Irish nationals aged 15-19 years working up to 9.5 hours per week compared with 13.4% of non-Irish nationals (See Table 2.4A & Table 2.4B).
Comparing youth employment rates (ages 15-24 years) and median earnings with those of the general working population (ages 25-64 years) reveals the impact of age on earnings. Nationalities with a higher percentage of employees aged 15-19 years typically saw lower median earnings for the youth. For example, 5.2% of employed Irish nationals were aged 15-19 years, compared with 1.9% of non-Irish nationals. The median weekly earnings for Irish nationals aged 15-24 years was €335.25, while for non-Irish nationals it was €430.25. Data from the LFS indicates that 67.1% of Irish nationals aged 15-19 years worked 19.5 hours or less per week, compared with 44.1% of non-Irish nationals. Among the general working age population (25-64 years), the hours worked by both groups were similar, with median weekly earnings of €840.16 for Irish nationals and €674.36 for non-Irish nationals (See Table 2.5).
All of Ireland’s economic sectors have experienced growth in terms of employment over the last five years. The largest increases in employments over the last five years were the Professional, Scientific & Technical Activities sector which grew by 39.2%, followed by the Information and Communication sector with a 29.5% increase, and the Construction industry which rose by 20.8%. Sectors with the lowest growth between 2018-2023 were the Arts, Entertainment, Recreation & Other Service Activities at 5.1% and Financial, Insurance & Real Estate at 7.3%.
In 2023, the sectors with the largest share of employments were in Wholesale & Retail Trade; Repair of Motor Vehicles & Motorcycles (15.5%), Human Health & Social Work (14.3%), and Industry (11.1%) (See Table 2.6).
Table 2.7 presents the breakdown of the portion of nationalities within each economic sector. Irish nationals had the lowest participation rates in the Accommodation & Food Services (56.1%), Administrative & Support Services (56.9%), and Information & Communication (59.0%). In each of those sectors the next highest employments were among: Brazilians who made up the second largest share in the Accommodation & Food Services at 5.2% of employments, Romanian nationals accounted for the second highest employments in the Administrative & Support Services sector at 5.2%, while Indian nationals had the second highest share of employments in the Information & Communication sector at 8.2% (See Table 2.7).
Table 2.8 examines the breakdown of each nationalities’ economic activity and the economic sectors in which they were employed. There were notable concentrations of some nationalities in certain economic sectors. For example, three in ten (31.4%) Indian nationals worked in the Human Health & Social Work sector, while the Accommodation & Food Services sector accounted for three out of ten (30.2%) Ukrainian employments and one in four (24.3%) employments for Brazilian nationals. Other sectors with high levels of non-Irish national participation include the Wholesale & Retail Trade; Repair of Motor Vehicles & Motorcycles, and Industry (See Table 2.8).
The highest median weekly earnings in employments were in the Information & Communication sector at €1,356.59. Of individual nationalities, UK nationals had the highest earnings of any nationality in this sector with median weekly earnings of €1,466.16, while Indian nationals had the next highest at €1,444.27, followed by Italian nationals at €1,376.55. The sector with the lowest median weekly earnings was Accommodation & Food Services at €364.41. The lowest paid nationalities in this sector were Irish (€294.07) and Ukrainian (€323.77). The composition of economic sectors in terms of participation rates and age both affect weekly earnings. For example, in the Accommodation & Food Services sector there was a clear relationship between median weekly earnings and age. Median weekly earnings for Irish nationals were €294.07 and the median age was 24 which is the lowest in this sector (See Table 2.9A, Table 2.9B & Table 2.10).
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