This chapter examines the employment sectors in which graduates work in the years following graduation. There are three employment sectors: 'ELC sector', 'Non ELC Health & Education sector' and 'Other Employment sector'. Please see the Overview of Early Learning Care Graduates chapter for the definitions of each employment sector.
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. For further information on these outcome classifications, please see the Background Notes chapter.
Employer NACE codes are derived from the Revenue data and refer to the primary activities of the employer. NACE represents the Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community. The industry sectors in this report are based on the alphabetical letter of the NACE code under Revision 2 (see Eurostat website). In cases where a graduate had more than one employment in a single year, then the NACE code associated with that individual for that year was taken from the main employer. Note that the NACE code is associated with the main activity of the employer, rather than that of the employee. For further information on the Main Employment, please see the Background Notes.
The percentages of substantially employed graduates in each employment sector are shown in Figure 3.1 for graduation years 2013 to 2022. The majority of graduates found employment in the ELC Sector, with this proportion rising from 55% for 2013 graduates to 73% for 2022 graduates. Note, however, that the proportion of graduates who worked in the ELC Sector in the year before graduating has also been increasing over this period, as shown in Figure 1.3.
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 2022.
The proportion of graduates working in Other Employment Sectors has declined by 20 percent points in this time period, from 36% to 16%.
From Figure 3.1, the proportion of those working in sectors other than ELC in the first year after graduation dropped from 45.2% in 2013 to 26.8% in 2022. This section examines those employments by NACE code.
Education (P) has seen a sharp rise in the proportion of graduates employed in sectors other than ELC, with an almost fourfold increase over the ten-year period, from 5.8% to 22.4%. In contrast, the percentage of those working in the Wholesale & Retail Trade (G) sector dropped by more than 12%, from 27.2% in 2013 to 14.6% in 2022. The share of ELC graduates in the Accommodation & Food Service Activities (I) sector also fell by nearly 9%, from 16.1% in 2013 to 7.8% in 2022.
In the first year after graduation, 73% of the 2020 graduates were working in the ELC Sector. By the third year after graduation this proportion has fallen to 65%. In the first year after graduation, 8.5% of 2020 graduates worked in the Non-ELC Health & Education Sector, with this proportion rising to 13.7% after three years. The share of 2020 graduates working in Other Employment Sectors accounted for 18.4% after one year, increasing to 21.5% after three years.
A majority of 2022 ELC graduates, at all NFQ levels, were working in the ELC Sector after one year, ranging from 63% of those at NFQ Level 8 to 83% at NFQ Level 7. More than one in five graduates at NFQ Level 5 worked in Other Employment Sectors compared with about one in ten of graduates at NFQ Level 7. Around 21% of NFQ Level 8 graduates from 2022 worked in Non-ELC Sector Health & Education Sector after one year, while less than 10% of any of NFQ Level 5,6 or 7 graduates worked in this sector.
Job Movers as analysed in this section refers to those who were in substantial employment one year after graduation and follows their employment record into the following year, or two years after graduation. While this analysis shows those moving in and out of substantial employment, it also provides additional insights into those continuing in employment but moving jobs both within the same sector or between different sectors.
Figure 3.5 shows the breakdown for the 2021 graduates by Employment Sector one year after graduation and by Employment Status and Sector the following year, or two years after graduation. Of those who were substantially employed in the ELC Sector one year after graduation, the majority either stayed with the same employer (2,265 graduates) or changed employer within the ELC Sector (495 graduates). Another 95 graduates switched employer and sector, moving to Non-ELC Sector Health and Education, while 155 graduates moved to Other Employment Sectors. Only 20 graduates were in Education two years after graduation, 85 were in Neither Employment nor Education and 45 were Not Captured. Significantly less graduates were substantially employed in Non-ELC Sector Health and Education or in Other Sectors one year after graduation. However, the majority still stayed with the same employer or moved employers within the same sector two years after graduation.
The 2021 graduates who were substantially employed in the Non-ELC Sector Health and Education one year after graduation were the most likely to stay with the same employer in the next year, at 75.8%. Of those substantially employed in the ELC Sector, 71.7% stayed with the same employer in the following year, while only 60.8% of those in Other Employment Sectors did. Those working in the ELC Sector one year after graduation were most likely to switch to a different employer within the ELC Sector in the following year, at 15.7%. Similarly, those working in Other Employment Sector one year after graduation were most likely to change employer in Other Employment Sectors in the following year, at 13.4%.
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