Employment in all parts of the Irish economy has grown over the past year, including in the technology sector, despite multinationals announcing major cuts to their global workforce.
In recent months, major US companies such as Twitter, Stripe, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have all announced major layoffs, but the number of people employed in the information, communications and technology or ICT sector in Ireland has risen to 125,900. February, up from 118,900 a year earlier.
This news comes after an announcement by Facebook parent company Meta that a further 50 of its employees in Ireland will be laid off, mainly from the company’s recruiting team. That’s in addition to the 350 people laid off at Meta in Ireland as part of their first round of layoffs.
However, the number of employed persons in the entire economy increased by 96,200 in the year to 2.41 million, according to February estimates from Statistics Netherlands payrolls.
The monthly worker index is up 4.2% in the 12 months to February 2023.com/awlW4ejkBk
— Central Statistics Office Ireland (@CSOIreland) 21 Apr 2023
All economic sectors reported increases in the worker index, with the financial, insurance and real estate sectors reporting the highest increase of 10.5% compared to February 2022. This sector employs approximately 125,400 people, the figures show. The second highest increase was in the accommodation and hospitality sector, followed by the tourism sector.
Of all the economic sectors surveyed, the wholesale and retail sector, including auto repairs, employed the largest number of people at 378,500, up 2% on the year.
The index of the Central Bureau of Statistics also shows that the number of working women grew faster than that of men over the year: 4.6% against 3.9%.
There is no doubt that Ireland has not been immune to the impact of the large number of redundancies at the ICT giants in recent months.
Ireland’s ICT multinationals employ 164,600 people, an increase of nearly 30% since before the outbreak of the pandemic, which marked a massive global recruitment drive by the US tech worker giants.
The Central Bank had estimated that by the end of February, the ICT giants had announced 87,330 layoffs worldwide, with nearly 2,310 in Ireland.
Since then, official data, government and independent economist forecasts, as well as anecdotal evidence, suggest that the tech layoffs are having little lasting effect as Ireland’s economy continues to boom.
The Treasury Department, in its major update last week, predicted that the unemployment rate was likely to remain around 4.5% this year, a level widely regarded as indicative of full employment in the economy.
Meanwhile, wage data showed an increase in employment across all age groups and indicated a trend for more older workers to be employed. The demographic with the largest increase, up just over 11% from a year earlier, was for those with retirement ages 65 and older. The next largest increase, at 6.3%, was for people aged 60 to 64.
