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Background Notes

The job churn rate for Q1 2024 was 11.8%, down 0.8 percentage points on the same period in 2023

Online ISSN: 2990-8272
CSO statistical release, , 11am
A CSO Frontier Series Output

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.

Overview

This release provides information about those leaving, staying, or taking new jobs and the enterprises in which these jobs are located.

Revenue’s PAYE Modernisation Data Flow

PAYE Modernisation (PMOD) has been operational for all employers in the State since the beginning of 2019. Under this system, employers are required to report their employee’s pay and deductions in real-time to Revenue each time they operate payroll. information is provided to Revenue at individual payslip level and pseudonymised data are used by the CSO.

Revisions

Labour Market Churn is published as a Frontier Series release; therefore, the methodology and data are subject to revision. As more data become available, due to later transmissions from employers, the series may change from month to month. As this particularly affects the most recent months, figures should be considered provisional for the most recent quarter of data. These data are available on Px-Stat (CSO main data dissemination service). An annual process will be carried out once per year which may lead to revisions for published data.

Time Periods

To allow for cross period analysis two primary variables are created for each period, time period t and t-1. Period t is the current period while t-1 is the previous period. i.e., t = 2024q1, t-1 = 2023q4.

Definitions and Methodology

The definitions and methodology used are adapted from those in (Bassanini & Marianna, 2009) to take account of methodology used in the Eurostat-OECD Manual on Business Demography Statistics.

Hirings (H) for an enterprise are calculated as the number of valid employment records assigned to an individual in period t for which a corresponding employment record for that individual did not exist in period t-1 with respect to that enterprise.

Job stayers (JS) for an enterprise are calculated as the number of valid employment records assigned to an individual in period t-1 for which a corresponding employment record exists for that individual in period t for the same enterprise.

Separations (S) for enterprises are calculated as the number of valid employment records assigned to an individual in period t-1 for which a corresponding employment record for that individual did not exist in period t with respect to that enterprise.

Job creation (JC) for an enterprise is measured as the difference in the number of valid employment records with non-zero reckonable pay between the two periods t and t-1, if that difference is positive and is assigned to period t. If the difference is not positive, JC is set to zero for period t.

On the other hand, job destruction (JD) for an enterprise is measured as the difference in the number of valid employment records with non-zero reckonable pay between the two periods t and t-1 if that difference is negative and is assigned to period t. If the difference is not negative, JD is set to zero for period t.

Job Churn is the difference between excess worker reallocation and excess job reallocation. Churning flows represent labour reallocation arising from enterprises churning workers through continuing jobs or employees quitting and being replaced on those jobs. This can be calculated by the addition of hirings and separation and the subtraction of both job creation and job destruction:

CHjt = Hjt + Sjt - JCjt - JDjt

At the enterprise level or any group of enterprises i, the overall change in employment in time t is defined as:

∆Eit = JCit - JDit = Hit - Sit

Where E, JC, JD, H and S represent employment, job creation, job destruction, hirings and separations, and ∆ the differences between period t-1 and t, for group i.

The Job Churn Rate (CHR) is calculated by using the method by Davis and Haltiwanger (1990) and Burgess, Lane and Stevens (2000) by making the denominator the average of the current and past number of employments:

Nit = (Eit = Eit - 1) / 2

CHR = CH / Nit

Where Nit is the average of employment for group i in period t and period t-1.

(Sandro Zolezzi , Keyssi Calderón , and Rebeca Torres, 2023).

NACE Sectors

The sectors of economic activity included in the survey were determined in accordance with the NACE Rev. 2 classification scheme, which is the European Commission’s classification system for economic activity. The NACE Rev. 2 sectors included were as follows:

Sector Description
Sector A Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
Sector B Mining and quarrying
Sector C Manufacturing
Sector D Electricity, gas, steam, and air conditioning supply
Sector E Water supply; sewerage, waste management and remediation activities
Sector F Construction
Sector G Wholesale and retail trade; Repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles
Sector H Transportation and storage
Sector I Accommodation and food service activities
Sector J Information and communication
Sector K Financial and insurance activities
Sector L Real estate activities
Sector M Professional, scientific, and technical activities
Sector N Administrative and support service activities
Sector R Arts, entertainment, and recreation
Sector S Other service activities
Sector T Activities of households as employers; undifferentiated goods - and services - producing activities of households for own use
Sector U Activities of extraterritorial organisations and bodies

Primary Employment

In the case where an employee has multiple employments, their primary employment is considered the employment with the highest gross pay.

Firm Size

Firm size is created by taking the number of employments of each enterprise in period t.

Separations by Economic Sector

Separations by Economic Sector from the previous quarter to the current quarter are split into 3 categories:

  1. Same Economic Sector - employees who have changed employer but stayed in the same Economic Sector.
  2. Different Economic Sector - employees who have changed employer and Economic Sector.
  3. No longer employed - employees who had an employer in the previous quarter but do not in the current quarter.

Coherence between Labour Market Churn and Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data

While both releases use PMOD as their data source, differences can be seen in their figures. This difference is due to the methodology, where Labour Market Churn uses all employments rather than employees.

Why you can Trust the CSO

Learn about our data and confidentiality safeguards, and the steps we take to produce statistics that can be trusted by all.