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.
The seasonally adjusted employee index decreased by 0.6% in the month to May 2022. The female employee index decreased by 0.3%, while the male index decreased by 0.4% for the same period.
The only age group that saw a monthly increase in the employee index was those aged 65 years and over (+0.5%), with the largest decrease occurring in the age group 15-19 years (–2.4%).
The Accommodation & food services activities sector saw an annual increase of 79.9% in May 2022. However, when comparing to pre-pandemic levels in May 2019, the sector decreased by 0.1%.
Data for two additional aggregated sectors are provided: Tourism industries and Cultural & creative industries saw decreases in their indices of 0.2% and 0.7% respectively in May 2022 when compared with April 2022.
| Seasonally Adjusted Employee Index | |||
| Seasonally Adjusted Employee Index Base Year: 2019=100 | Monthly % change | Annual % change | |
| May 2021 | 97.3 | 3.6 | 10.7 |
| April 2022 | 108.9 | 0.7 | 16.0 |
| May 2022 | 108.3 | -0.6 | 11.3 |
March 2021 was the last month to show a negative annual change (-10.9%) for the employee index when compared to the previous year. The male and female indices have increased on an annual basis by 10.4% and 12.2% respectively.
All age groups minus those aged 65 years and over showed monthly decreases in the seasonally adjusted employee index in May 2022, with 15-19 years (-2.4%), 20-24 years (-1.6%), and 25-34 years (-1.2%) showing the largest decreases.
The seasonally adjusted employee index in the Information & communication sector saw continuous monthly increases from December 2020 to April 2022, where it reached 118.0, up 9.2% from the previous year. It maintained its peak index value in May 2022.
Agriculture had the largest decrease in the monthly index (-4.0%), while Education had the largest increase (+0.6%) in May 2022.
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (13 July 2022) released Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data May 2022.
Commenting on the release, John Mullane, Statistician, said:
“Today’s release details employee estimates for May 2022 using administrative data. All data presented are seasonally adjusted. For further information see the background notes.
The Arts, entertainment, recreation & other service activities sector saw an annual increase of 15.1% to May 2022. However, this sector saw the largest decrease (-4.5%) in the seasonally adjusted employee index over the three years from May 2019 to May 2022.
The sector showing the largest percentage increase for the series over the three-year period (May 2019 - May 2022) was the Information & communication sector (+18.5%). The annual increase for the same sector was 7.5%.
The age group with the smallest increase when comparing May 2019 to May 2022 for the series was 25-34 years at 0.6%.
The highest annual increases were noted in the following age groups; 47.1% for 15-19 years, 22.1% for 20-24 years and 18.8% for 65 and over.”