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 lowest churn rate in Q1 2026 was observed in Services at 3.6% followed by Industry (7.3%).
Administrative & Support Service Activities recorded the highest job churn in the quarter at 50,100.
Accommodation & Food Service Activities had the highest number of hirings (43,762).
The sector that saw the highest number of job creations in Q1 2026 was the Accommodation & Food Service Activities sector (18,797), an increase of 80.5% (8,382) from a year earlier.
Accommodation & Food Service Activities had the highest number of separations (38,480) and Professional, Scientific & Technical Activities had the highest number of job destructions (15,679).
Wholesale & Retail Trade; Repair of Motor Vehicles and Motorcycles had the highest number of stayers (381,963) of all the economics sectors in Q1 2026.
The firm size with the highest job churn rate in Q1 2026 was the 50-249 employee group, where the job churn was 14.4%, up from 12.9% in Q1 2025.
The firm size with the lowest job churn rate in Q1 2026 was the 1-9 employee group, where the job churn rate was 6.2%, up from 5.7% in Q1 2025.
In Q1 2026 all firm sizes observed an increase in the job churn rate when compared with Q1 2025. The largest increases were seen in firms with 50 to 249 employees up to 14.4% from 12.9% and firms with 250+ employees, up to 12.3% from 11.2%.
Firms with 250+ employees accounted for 29.8% of all job creations in Q1 2026 (39,545), up from a year ago when firms of this size made up 27.9% of job creations (29,506).
Looking at job destructions, firms with up to 49 employees accounted for 75.8% of all job destructions in Q1 2026 (86,312). This was an increase on Q1 2025, when firms of this size were made up of 66.0% of job destructions (93,190).
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 50.4% of destructions in Q1 2026 (57,383), up from 40.8% of all destructions 12 months ago (57,571).
In Q1 2026 there were 2,861,972 recorded employments, Irish-owned affiliates accounted for highest proportion at 75.5% followed by Foreign-owned affiliates owned by non-EU multinationals at 19.3% and Foreign-owned affiliates owned by EU multinationals at 5.1%.
The total number of jobs created in Q1 2026 was 132,779, an increase of 27,014 (25.5%) when compared with the previous year. Jobs created by Irish-owned enterprises accounted for 84.5% (112,209) of all jobs created in Q1 2026.
There were 113,880 job destructions in Q1 2026, a decrease of 27,326 (19.4%) when compared with the previous year. The number of jobs destroyed was highest among Irish-owned enterprises which accounted for 88.0% (100,193) of the total figure.
Job churn rate for Irish-owned enterprises in Q1 2026 was 12.3%, a rise of 1.0 percentage points when compared with a year earlier. All Foreign-owned enterprises saw an increase of 1.2 percentage points, from 9.5% in Q1 2025 to 10.7% in Q1 2026.
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