This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources.
In 2023, the employment market was comprised of 12.6% of employments categorised as seasonal and 87.4% categorised as continuous.
Looking at the effect of age on working patterns, the younger working population aged 15-24 tended to do more seasonal work than the general working population aged 25-64. In 2019, those aged 15-24 made up 16.4% of all employments, however, their proportional representation in seasonal work was 38.5%.
Non-Irish nationals made up for 27.3% of all employments in 2023 and accounted for 36.2% of seasonal workers.
Seasonal workers had median weekly earnings in 2023 of €382.06, up 6.4% from 2022.
In 2023, the top four sectors for seasonal employment were Accommodation & Food Services at 22.3%, followed by Tourism Industries (20.8%), Administrative & Support Services (20.2%), and Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing (18.7%).
Of the top four sectors with the highest prevalence of seasonal workers, median weekly earnings for seasonal employment in 2023 were highest in the Administrative & Support Services at €433.18. This sector also experienced the highest growth in median weekly earnings since 2019, increasing by 20.3%.
Criteria for employment type is set as the following:
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (20 March 2025) published Employments and Earnings Characteristics of Seasonal Workers 2023.
Commenting on the release, Darragh Turner, Statistician in the Labour Market and Earnings Analysis Division of the CSO, said: “This release will explore the trends in the type of employment (seasonal and continuous) from 2019-2023 and the median weekly earnings associated with these types of employment. This release will also provide further insight into economic sectors where seasonal work is most prevalent and the demographic and economic characteristics that might further explain the earnings and work pattern of these groups such as age, economic sector, and nationality. The primary data source for this analysis 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.
Top Four Sectors
There are four sectors in Ireland that account for the highest proportion of seasonal workers in relation to their overall numbers in employment from 2019-2023. These were Accommodation & Food Services, Administrative & Support Services, Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing, and Tourism Industries, which is an aggregation of a number of activities from different sectors.
There were some noticeable compositional effects during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020-2022, where the proportion of continuous workers were reduced, and the proportion of seasonal employments grew. However, due to lockdowns and sector specific restrictions and closures, there would have been a large number of workers who inadvertently moved between continuous and seasonal employments during these years. An example of this was in the Accommodation & Food Services sector where the proportion of seasonal workers went from 22.2% in 2019 to 39.7% in 2020, 33.5% in 2021, 24.8% in 2022, and 22.3% in 2023. Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing, on the other hand, was relatively unaffected during this period where the proportion of seasonal workers went from 20.8% in 2019 to 21.9% in 2020, 20.2% in 2021, 19.5% in 2022, and 18.7% in 2023.
Of the top four sectors with the highest prevalence of seasonal workers, median weekly earnings for seasonal employments in 2023 were highest in the Administrative & Support Services at €433.18. This sector has also experienced the highest growth in median weekly earnings since 2019, rising by 20.3% by 2023. The Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing sector had the next highest median weekly earnings at €396.19 in 2023 which rose by 18.4% from 2019-2023.This was followed by the Tourism Industries sector, which had median weekly earnings of €273.25, up 16.3% between 2019-2023, while Accommodation & Food Services had the lowest median weekly earnings for seasonal employment of €267.43 in 2023, which was up by 15.6% since 2019.
Delving further into the compositional make up of these seasonal sectors we can see that there are differences in type of work in terms of age, nationality, and sector of employment which provide some context into working demographics and median weekly earnings. There are some clear differences in working patterns for Irish and non-Irish nationals depending on their age. For Irish nationals, apart from the Administrative & Support Services Activities sector, the majority of seasonal work is done by those aged 15-24-years-old. This age category makes up between 36% - 41% of seasonal employments in Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing, Accommodation & Food Services, and Tourism Industries. In the case of non-Irish nationals, it is those aged between 25-64-years of age who work in seasonal employments. This age group makes up between 26% - 40% of seasonal employments in Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing, Accommodation & Food Services, Administrative & Support Services, and Tourism Industries.
Agriculture
In Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing the median weekly earnings of seasonal employments were €396.19 for 2023 and accounted for 18.7% of all employments in the sector. Within that, Irish nationals aged 15-24-years-old made up the largest proportion of seasonal workers at 40.9% of employments with median weekly earnings of €300.00. Non-Irish nationals aged 25-64-years represented the second largest group with 25.7% of seasonal employments in Agriculture, Forestry & Fishing and median weekly earnings of €496.00. Irish nationals aged 25-64-years made up 21.8% of seasonal employments and had median weekly earnings of €433.33.
Accommodation and Food Services
Seasonal workers in the Accommodation & Food Services sector had median weekly earnings of €267.43 and 22.3% of all employments in this sector. Breaking out the composition of seasonal workers in this sector, the highest proportion were Irish nationals aged 15-24-years with median weekly earnings of €188.41. Non-Irish nationals aged 25-64-years made up 32.1% of seasonal employments and had median weekly earnings of €349.43, and non-Irish nationals aged 15-24-years had the third largest share of seasonal employments at 17.7% with median weekly earnings of €305.73.
Administration and Support Service Activities
Administrative & Support Service Activities in 2023 had 20.2% of all employments in the sector classed as seasonal and median weekly earnings of €433.18. The subgroup with the highest proportion of seasonal workers in this sector were non-Irish nationals aged 25-64-years with 40.3% of seasonal employments and median weekly earnings of €450.94. This was followed by Irish nationals aged 25-64-years-old accounting for 27.4% of seasonal employments with median weekly earnings of €487.50, while Irish nationals aged 15-24-years-old had the third highest proportion of seasonal employments (19.7%) and median weekly earnings of €366.74.
Tourism
Tourism Industries, which is an aggregation of a number of activities of different sectors, had seasonal workers make up 20.8% of all employments and median weekly earnings of €273.25. Of all seasonal workers in this sector, Irish nationals aged 15-24-years made up 35.8% of seasonal employments with median weekly earnings of €191.45. This was followed by non-Irish nationals aged 25-64-years, with 31.9% of seasonal employments and median weekly earnings of €355.67 and by non-Irish nationals aged 15-24-years who made up the third highest proportion of seasonal employments (17.8%) with median weekly earnings of €311.50.
Understanding the compositional make up of these sectors adds context to the factors that influence median weekly earnings in each sector. For example, sectors where there were higher proportions of young Irish and non-Irish nationals aged 15-24-years in seasonal work tended to have lower median weekly earnings such as the Accommodation & Food Service sector. If we compare this with the Administrative & Support Services Activities sector, there is a much higher proportion of Irish and non-Irish nationals aged 25-64-years working in seasonal employment, and median weekly earnings in this sector were higher than the other three sectors.”