New entrants to the employment market dropped slightly in 2023, while median pay on a weekly basis rose, new figures from the Central Statistics Office show.

The sector with the highest percentage of new entrants was Accommodation & Food Services at 22.5% in 2023.

Administrative & Support Services (13.1%) and Arts was the second most popular followed by Entertainment, Recreation & Other Services (12.3%).

The new data also shows, median weekly earnings among new entrant employments in 2023 stood at €403.08, up 3.8% on the previous year (€388.50).

This compares with an increase of 4.2% in median weekly earnings across total employment.

Of the new entrants in 2023, 52% were male and 48% were female.

However, Human Health & Social Work was the only economic sector in which new entrant employments among females (€563.74) had higher median weekly earnings compared with their male counterparts (€511.40).

Despite recording the highest median weekly earnings in 2023 (€994.12), Information & Communication was the only economic sector to indicate a decline in earnings among new entrant employments (-19.5%) between 2022 and 2023.

Irish nationals accounted for the largest proportion of new entrants in 2023 at 43.5%, followed by Indian (8.3%) and Brazilian (5.2%) nationals.

Of the new Irish national entrants to employment in 2023, more than half were aged 15-24 years (61.0%).

The CSO said Irish nationals were the only nationality cohort where the proportion of new entrants aged 15-24 years was larger than the proportion aged 25-64 years.

Dr Eimear Heffernan, a statistician in the Earnings Analysis Division of the CSO, said the analysis was based on the Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS) release, produced by the CSO on an annual basis.