This release 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.
The highest job churn rate was recorded in the Administrative & Support Service Activities sector (22.9%), followed by the Accommodation & Food Service Activities sector (17.7%).
The lowest churn rate in Q1 2025 was observed in Financial, Insurance & Real Estate Activities and Information & Communication sectors at 6.8% followed by Industry (6.9%).
The Wholesale & Retail Trade; Repair of Motor Vehicles & Motorcycles sector had the highest number of hirings (33,214) while Administrative & Support Service Activities recorded the highest job churn in the quarter at 45,120.
Accommodation & Food Service Activities had the highest number of separations (43,648) and had the highest number of job destructions (21,508). Wholesale & Retail Trade: Repair of Motor Vehicles & Motorcycles had the highest number of stayers (384,203) of all the economics sectors in Q1 2025.
The economic sector with the highest proportion of stayers in Q1 2025 was Industry (93.6%), while the lowest proportion of stayers was Administrative & Support Service Activities (83.9%).
The sector that saw the highest number of job creations in Q1 2025 was the Wholesale & Retail Trade; Repair of Motor Vehicles & Motorcycles sector (12,323), with a decrease of 1.8% (232) from a year earlier.
Two sectors saw an annual increase in the number of job creations in Q1 2025. These were seen in Information & Communication where creations were up 26.0% to 6,121 and Financial, Insurance & Real Estate Activities, where creations rose 2.2% to 5,547.
The largest year-on-year percentage decreases in job creations in Q1 2025 were in Services down 52.7% to 43 and Public Administration and Defence; Compulsory Social Security down 46.9% to 3,488. Note: Due to the relatively low size of the sector, the Services sector can experience volatile changes year on year.
The economic sector that saw the highest number of people who left their primary employment but remained in the same sector in Q1 2025 was Information & Communication, where 17.9% of separations were working in the same sector in the next quarter.
In the Financial, Insurance & Real Estate Activities sector 41.5% of primary employment separations were employed in a different economic sector in the next quarter – the highest proportion of all economic sectors in Q1 2025.
It should be noted that the large annual changes seen in job destructions for Professional, scientific and technical activities (M) and Public administration and defence; compulsory social security (O) are due to temporary staff hirings to fulfil roles during the 2024 General Election.
The firm size with the highest job churn rate in Q1 2025 was the 50-249 employee group, where the job churn was 13.3%, down from 13.7% in Q1 2024.
The firm size with the lowest job churn rate in Q1 2025 was the 1-9 employee group, where the job churn rate was 5.8%, down from 6.1% in Q1 2024.
In Q1 2025 all firm size groups observed a decrease in the job churn rate when compared with Q1 2024. The largest decrease was seen in firms with 10 to 49 employees, down 0.6 percentage points from a job churn rate of 11.8% to 11.2%.
Firms with 10 to 49 employees accounted for 28.6% of all job creations in Q1 2025 (28,850), up from a year ago when firms of this size made up 24.6% of job creations (30,977).
Looking at job destructions, firms with up to 49 employees accounted for 65.2% of all job destructions in Q1 2025 (87,088). This was an increase on Q1 2024, when firms of this size were made up of 63.5% of job destructions (81,202).
The group of enterprises that made up the largest number of destructions by firm size was the 1 to 9 employees group. This group made up 38.8% of destructions in Q1 2025 (51,795), down from 42.3% of all destructions 12 months ago (54,053).
In Q1 2025 there were 2,801,952 recorded employments, Irish-owned affiliates accounted for highest proportion at 76.2% followed by Foreign-owned affiliates owned by non-EU multinationals at 18.8% and Foreign-owned affiliates owned by EU multinationals at 4.9%.
The total number of jobs created in Q1 2025 was 100,856, a decrease of 24,915 (19.8%) when compared to a year previous. Jobs created by Irish-owned enterprises accounted for 87.3% (87,980) of all jobs created in Q1 2025.
There were 133,538 job destructions in Q1 2025, an increase of 5,755 (4.5%) when compared to the previous year. The number of jobs destroyed was highest among Irish-owned enterprises which accounted for 85.6% (114,339) of the total figure.
Job churn rate for Irish-owned enterprises in Q1 2025 was 11.5%, a decline of 0.2 percentage points when compared with the previous year. All Foreign-owned enterprises saw a fall of 0.4 percentage points, from 10.2% in Q1 2024 to 9.8% in Q1 2025.
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