The number of people in employment in Ireland has returned to pre-pandemic levels according to new figures released by the Central Statistics Office.

An estimated 2.5 million are in work, the CSO figures reveal. The seasonally adjusted figure represents an all-time high for employment in Ireland.

The employment rate for people aged 15-64 in Q1 2022 was 72.8%.

The CSO classified 126,700 people as unemployed in Q1 2022, with an associated Unemployment Rate of 4.8%.

In Q1 2022, the total number of people available to work was 2,630,000, according to CSO estimates. The number of persons not in the labour force was 1,430,000.

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The CSO’s Labour Force Survey estimates are based on face-to-face and telephone interviews with 12,028 responding households.

The numbers at work in the Irish economy rose by 1.4% on the previous quarter, which translates to an additional 36,000 people at work in the past three months.

The numbers at work in Q1 2022 were higher than their Q1 2020 level in nine out of fourteen sectors.

Austin Hughes, chief economist at KBC Bank Ireland, said there is a clear split in terms of the speed of jobs growth.

“Rapid jobs gains in areas such as technology and industry largely reflect the robust and resilient nature of the multinational sector, while areas such as health have seen jobs growth driven to a significant extent by shortcomings exposed by the pandemic,” he commented.

“At the other end of the spectrum, changed work practices have curbed demand for admin-type jobs, while increased online activity has also weighed on employment prospects in retail and wholesale sectors.”

In the same vein, employment in the hospitality sector is still lower than two years ago.  However, the hospitality sector has seen the fastest increase in employment in the past twelve months. 

“This ‘lagged boom’ in hiring in tourism-related activities may help explain current hiring difficulties in this area where ‘scarring’ from the pandemic likely led employees previously working in this sector to switch to faster-recovering areas that may have offered seemingly more secure job prospects,” said Hughes.

“To a lesser extent, similar issues regarding the balance between the demands of employers and the supply preferences of employees may be at play in the construction sector,” he added.