Ireland's UN SDG's - Goal 8 Decent Work and Economic Growth 2021

SDG 8.1.1 Annual growth rate of real GDP per capita is published by the CSO, National Accounts Division.

GDP per capita and more detailed data is available from the CSO's National Income and Expenditure 2019 publication.  GDP at constant prices rose from €46,556 to €70,138 per Capita (person) between 2014 and 2019, an increase of 51%.  There was a smaller increase of 36% in GNI* per capita over this time period, with a rise from €39,769 to €54,080. 

GNI* is designed to be a national indicator for Gross National Income (GNI) that excludes the globalisation effects that disproportionately affect the measurement of the size of the Irish Economy.  See Table 4.1 and Figure 4.1.

SDG 8.2.1 Annual growth rate of real GDP per employed person is published by the CSO, National Accounts Division.

GDP per employed person and more detailed data is available from the CSO's National Income and Expenditure 2019 publication.  GDP at constant prices per employed person rose 37% between 2014 and 2019, from €108,749 to €148,626.  Over this same time period, GNI* increased by 23% from €92,895 to €114,598.  See Table 4.4 and Figure 4.2.

SDG 8.3.1 Proportion of informal employment in total employment, by sector and sex is published by the CSO, Labour Force Survey.

According to the UN metadata document for SDG 8.3.1, this indicator presents the share of employment which is classified as informal employment in the total economy, and separately in agriculture and in non-agriculture.

Employment comprises all persons of working age who, during a short reference period (one week), were engaged in any activity to produce goods or provide services for pay or profit.

Informal employment comprises persons who in their main or secondary jobs were in one of the following categories:

• Own-account workers, employers and members of producers’ cooperatives employed in their own informal sector enterprises (the characteristics of the enterprise determine the informal nature of their jobs);
• Own-account workers engaged in the production of goods exclusively for own final use by their household (e.g. subsistence farming);
• Contributing family workers, regardless of whether they work in formal or informal sector enterprises (they usually do not have explicit, written contracts of employment, and are not subject to labour legislation, social security regulations, collective agreements, etc., which determines the informal nature of their jobs);
• Employees holding informal jobs, whether employed by formal sector enterprises, informal sector enterprises, or as paid domestic workers by households (employees are considered to have informal jobs if their employment relationship is, in law or in practice, not subject to national labour legislation, income taxation, social protection or entitlement to certain employment benefits).

For the purpose of classifying persons into formal or informal employment for this indicator, only the characteristics of the main job are considered.

An enterprise belongs to the informal sector if it fulfils the three following conditions: 

• It is an unincorporated enterprise (it is not constituted as a legal entity separate from its owners, and it is owned and controlled by one or more members of one or more households, and it is not a quasicorporation (it does not have a complete set of accounts, including balance sheets);
• It is a market enterprise (it sells at least some of the goods or services it produces);
• The enterprise is not registered or the employees of the enterprise are not registered or the number of persons engaged on a continuous basis is below a threshold determined by the country.

Employment data recently published by the CSO is available from the Labour Force Survey Quarter 4 2020.  [Note: A new Labour Force Survey (LFS) replaced the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS) in Q3 2017 and, as a result, care should be taken when comparing data from before and after this period. Please see background notes of the LFS release for additional information].

According to the latest data the labour force grew from 2.331 million in Q4 2016 to 2.445 million by Q4 2020.  Over this time period, the number of people in employment grew from 2.164 million to 2.306 million.

There were more males in employment than females in recent years.  In Q4 2020, there were 1.245 million males in employment compared with 1.061 million females.

The participation rate for males was 67.5%, higher than the rate for females of 55.3% in Q4 2020.  The unemployment rate was also higher for males, at 5.9%, compared with 5.5% for females.  See Table 4.5.

SDG 8.4.1 Material footprint, material footprint per capita, and material footprint per GDP is published by the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD).

The material footprint rose in Ireland from 98.33 million tonnes in 2010 to 102.19 by 2017. 

However, the material footprint per person fell slightly over this time period, from 21.59kg to 21.50kg. 

GDP per material footprint increased from 2.38 to 3.54 US dollars per kg between 2010 and 2017.  See Table 4.11.

SDG 8.4.2 Domestic material consumption, domestic material consumption per capita, and domestic material consumption per GDP is published by the CSO, Environment and Climate Division in the Material Flow Accounts 2019 release.

Domestic Material Consumption was estimated at 121.7 million tonnes in 2019 which was 3.5 million tonnes or 3.0% higher than in 2018.  The Domestic Material Consumption of non-metallic minerals increased by 7.1 million tonnes or 13.5% between 2018 and 2019 whereas that of fossil fuels fell by 4.3 million tonnes or 22.4%.  See Table 4.12.