Employment trends: rapid growth in number of women working outside the home

NINE OUT OF every 10 jobs added to the Irish workforce over the past year have been filled by non-Irish nationals.

Total employment increased by 53,800 or 2.6 per cent to 2.135 million in the year to the first quarter of 2008, according to the Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS), published yesterday by the Central Statistics Office.

Non-Irish workers accounted for 48,400 or 90.0 per cent of this net addition to employment. Net job gains by Irish nationals numbered 5,400 over the year. As labour scarcity intensified during the boom years, the economy became increasingly dependent on foreign workers. As a result, by the first quarter of 2008, the number of non-Irish nationals employed in Ireland had reached 352,000, or one in every six of those at work.

The latest QNHS figures show employment continuing to grow - at least until mid-January - but at a decelerating pace.

Annual employment expansion has slowed from 3.8 per cent in the first quarter of 2007 to 2.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2008. On a seasonally-adjusted basis, the total numbers at work increased by 6,200 or by 0.3 per cent between the final quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2008.

Employment trends over the past year have been characterised by continuing rapid growth in the number of women working outside the home, by the concentration of job gains in part-time employment and by the primacy of the services sector as the engine of employment growth.

Of the employment gain of 53,800 over the past year, women filled 39,500 of the additional jobs, while employment among men increased by just 14,300. As a result, women accounted for almost three-quarters of the total net job gains in the economy in the past year. By the first quarter of 2008, there were 926,400 women working outside the home and women now comprise 43.3 per cent of the national workforce.

Part-time jobs accounted for two-thirds of all employment gains in the year to the first quarter of 2008. During this year, part-time employment advanced by 35,400 or by 10.0 per cent to 390,000. In contrast, the number of full-time jobs grew by just 18,400 or by 1.1 per cent. Full-time jobs held by men increased by just 4,500 in the last year.

Jobs have been lost in construction and industry while employment gains have been concentrated in services and agriculture. Construction employment declined by 9,800 during the past year, though the construction workforce still remained high, at 274,400 or one in eight of the national workforce, in the first quarter of 2008.

Employment in production industries - mainly manufacturing - fell by 7,500 or 2.5 per cent in the year to the first quarter of 2008.But while employment has increased in the past year, so too has unemployment. The numbers out of work, measured on an International Labour Office basis, increased from 93,400 in the first quarter of 2007 to 102,100 in the first quarter of 2008. This represents an unemployment increase of 8,700 or 9.3 per cent over the year.

All of the increase in unemployment was suffered by men as the number of women out of work during the year actually declined.

As a result, the unemployment rate - the numbers out of work as a percentage of the labour force - edged upwards from 4.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2007 to 4.6 per cent in the first quarter of this year.