Early Learning Care Graduate Outcomes 2013-2017

This chapter examines the employment sectors in which graduates work in the years following graduation. A variable called 'Employment sector' has been developed for this analysis, and this is obtained by linking Pobal and Revenue data to produce three classifications:

• 'ELC Sector' - Graduates who are either employed or self-employed in pre-primary education or child day-care activities (NACE codes P8510 and Q8891), or who work for an employer which is approved by Pobal.
• 'Non-ELC Sector Health and Education' - Graduates who are not in the ELC sector (see above) but are employed or self-employed in either the Education sector (NACE code P) or Human Health & Social Work Activities (NACE code Q).
• 'Other Employment Sectors' - Graduates who work in any other sectors of the economy.

A full description of NACE sectors (General Industrial Classification of Economic Activities within the European Communities) is available here (NACE codes). 

Only graduates who are classified as being in substantial employment are included in this chapter, including those who are both in substantial employment and enrolled in education. Employer NACE codes are derived from the Revenue data and refer to the primary activities of the employer. The administrative data which this publication draws upon does not contain occupation codes which might offer greater detail about the type of work carried out by graduates.

Majority of new graduates enter ELC Sector employment in their first year after graduation

The proportion of substantially employed graduates in each employment sector are shown in figure 3.1 for the first year after graduation for graduation years 2013 to 2017. The majority of graduates found employment in the ELC sector, with this proportion rising from 59% for 2013 graduates to 73% for 2017 graduates. Note, however, that the proportion of graduates who worked in this sector in the year before graduating has also been increasing over this period, as shown in Table 1.1.

Around one in ten graduates worked in Non-ELC Sector Health & Education in their first year after graduation for each graduation year between 2013 and 2017.

The proportion of graduates working in Other Employment Sectors has declined over this time period, from 31.8% to 18.2%.

Interactive table: PxStat Link ELA03

Three in five 2015 graduates were working in ELC Sector Employment one year after graduation

Over two in three (68.4%) graduates in 2015 worked in the ELC Sector in the first year after graduation and this proportion remained very stable (66.1%) after three years. In the first year after graduation, 7.9% of 2015 graduates worked in Non-ELC Health & Education, rising slightly to 11% after three years. The proportion working in Other Employment Sectors accounted for 23.7% of graduates in 2015 after one year, dropping slightly to 22.9% after three years.

Interactive table: PxStat Link ELA03

Employment sectors by NFQ level

A majority of graduates at all NFQ levels in 2017 were working in the ELC Sector after one year, ranging from 61% of those at level 5 to 84% at level 6. About one in four graduates at level 5 worked in Other Employment Sectors compared with about one in six of graduates at both levels 7 and 8. Only 11.8% of level 6 graduates from 2017 worked in Other Employment Sectors after one year.

Interactive table: PxStat Link ELA03

Breakdown of graduates working in Other Employment Sectors

From figure 3.1, between 18.2% and 31.8% of graduates from each year were working in sectors other than ELC and Health and Education in the first year after graduation, this section examines these employments by NACE code.

Wholesale & Retail Trade (G), Accommodation & Food Service Activities (I) and Public Administration & Defence (O) are the most common NACE sectors for graduates who were employed in other sectors, though the proportions of graduates working in these sectors has changed over time. Between 2013 and 2017 the percentage employed in Wholesale & Retail Trade (G) has decreased from 32.5% to 28%,  the percentage employed in Public Administration & Defence (O) has increased from 15.7% to 25.8% while in Accommodation & Food Service Activities (I) the percentage employed has decreased from 19.3% to 14%.

Interactive table: PxStat Link ELA03

Job Churn

Job Churn was examined by analysing the individual employment records of 2017 graduates in the first year after graduation. This analysis was restricted to those graduates who had some record of substantial employment in the ELC sector in that year in order to focus on churn within that sector. Figure 3.5 shows the breakdown for these graduates according to the number of distinct employers that each graduate had in the year following graduation. Note that this includes employment in any sector and of any duration, including many jobs which do not meet the criteria for "substantial employment" as outlined in the Background Notes chapter. Any self-employment activity is counted as one additional employer.

Two-thirds of graduates (66.1%) who worked in the ELC Sector had only one employer in the first year after graduation. A further 25% had records of employment with two distinct employers, and 7.5% worked with three different employers in the year. A very small proportion of 1.3% had four or more distinct employers over the 12 months.

Interactive table: PxStat Link ELA03

The same data on numbers of distinct employers is broken down by NFQ level in figure 3.6. Graduates from NFQ level 6 courses were the least likely to have multiple employers in their first year after graduation, with almost three quarters (72.3%) having a single employer over the course of the year. In previous chapters it has been shown that this group of graduates were more likely to be older and to be already working in the ELC Sector. In contrast, only 58.8% of level 7 graduates had one employer, and a total of 17.7% of graduates at this level had three or more employers.

Interactive table: PxStat Link ELA03

In figure 3.5 it was shown that approximately one third of 2017 graduates had multiple employers, i.e. substantial employment in the ELC Sector and at least one other distinct employer. Figure 4.7 takes a closer look at the sectors of these additional jobs. The figure shows that 44.4% of those with multiple employers had additional work in the ELC Sector. A further 11.9% had work in the ELC and other sectors, meaning that a total of 56.3% of those with multiple employers had at least one extra job in the ELC sector. On the other hand, 43.7% had additional jobs in sectors other than the ELC sector.

Interactive table: PxStat Link ELA03

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