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.
This publication aims to provide insightful analysis in terms of employment and earnings by the nationality of enterprise ownership in Ireland, by combining a variety of labour market and earnings products, including Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data Sources (MEPEADS), Labour Market Churn (LMC) and Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS). The release is part of the CSO’s ‘Frontier Series’, and therefore the methodology and data are subject to revision. Each product referred to in the release analysis uses its most recently available data and is subject to revision in future iterations.
Revenue's employee tax data contains a complete register of all employments and is the most accurate source of remuneration. It provides details of gross annual earnings and number of weeks worked in the year for all employments. The weekly earnings are calculated by dividing the gross annual earnings, as declared to Revenue, by the number of weeks worked in the year for each employment. For years 2011-2018 the employee tax data used for the EAADS came from employer end of year returns, P35, submitted to Revenue. The P35 was an annual return that was completed by all registered employers after the tax year end, up to 2018. Since 01 January 2019, Revenue has operated real-time reporting of payroll; “PAYE Modernisation" (PMOD). Employers are required to report their employees’ pay and deductions in real-time to Revenue each time they operate payroll. Information is provided to Revenue at individual payslip level. EAADS analysis from 2019 onwards is based on the more detailed employee tax data provided by Revenue’s PMOD system.
The Central Records System of the Department of Social Protection provides information on age, nationality, gender, and county of residence. Using a unique identifier each employee on the employee tax data files can be linked to their individual demographic characteristics on the Department of Social Protection datasets. Therefore, the earnings dataset is enhanced by adding the demographic details.
Linking the unique enterprise number common to both the Revenue employee tax data files and the CSO’s Business Register allows enterprise level variables to be added to each individual employee, including economic sector, firm size, and nationality of ownership. The nationality of ownership variable for 2023 and 2024 is based on the most recently available ownership data and is subject to revision in future iterations.
The earnings component of this publication is based on the annual Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS) publication, which presents statistics on weekly and annual earnings based on administrative data sources, primarily Revenue’s employee tax data (PMOD). The estimates presented in EAADS are nominal earnings and are not adjusted for inflation. Please note that the earnings estimates presented in EAADS do not account for hours worked, or whether an employment was full-time or part-time. Further information regarding methodology and definitions are available in the Background Notes of the publication.
Labour Market Churn provides information about those leaving, staying, or taking new jobs and the enterprises in which these jobs are located. 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 PxStat (CSO main data dissemination service). An annual process will be carried out once per year which may lead to revisions for published data.
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 = 2024q2, t-1 = 2024q1. Information on methodology and definitions such as Job Churn and its associated rate can be found in the Background Notes of our Labour Market Churn release.
The Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data calculates the estimated number of employees using Revenue’s PAYE Modernisation as the data source. Persons are counted if they are estimated to have worked for greater than zero pay during the reference month. This differs to the criteria used to derive International Labour Organisation (ILO) and Principal Economic Status (PES) employment; therefore, results do not align with the Labour Force Survey (LFS) due to differing methodology. Data are presented in both seasonally and non-seasonally adjusted form.
The Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data is published as a 'Frontier' 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 two most recent months for the non-seasonally adjusted data. These data are available on PxStat (CSO main data dissemination service). An annual process will be carried out once per year which may lead to revisions for published data. Seasonally adjusted data in this release are subject to revision based on updates to the seasonally adjusted series whenever new monthly data are added. As this release is a very short time series, it is at the lower limit of acceptable length for the seasonal adjustment process. In the short term, care should be taken in interpreting the seasonally adjusted output. Users should be aware that there is increased uncertainty around the seasonally adjusted figures during the COVID-19 period due to the volatility of the data. The models are being updated as part of the annual review process in accordance with the Central Statistics Office (CSO) and European Statistical System/Eurostat (ESS) guidelines. All figures for monthly percentage change and annual percentage change are calculated prior to the input data being rounded. The nationality of ownership variable for 2023 and 2024 is based on the most recently available ownership data, is not final and is subject to revision in future iterations.
If a person has multiple jobs, these are ranked according to estimated pay and the higher paid employment in the reference month is kept for assigning nationality of ownership of the enterprise to employees. Estimated pay is calculated by creating a daily pay amount for each payment using pay frequency. The daily pay rates are averaged across the month using all payments for a person in a job.
Further background information can be found on the Background Notes of Monthly Estimates of Payroll Employees using Administrative Data frontier release.
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