March of 2012 marked one one of the highest rates of unemployment since the beginning of the 2000s. January 2012 was the peak, with unemployment reaching a whopping 16pc of the entire willing and able working population.
Since then, unemployment rates have been decreasing steadily by 2-3pc every 2 years. From 2013 to Q1 of 2019, there was a was a 21.7pc increase, or 409,900 people, increase in employment; this percentage was almost entirely made of full time employment gains.
The total number of people that are employed now is 2,301,900, of which “1,828,900 or 79.5pc were in full-time employment while 473,000 or 20.5pc were in part-time employment” according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
Of these increases, there was growth in every one of the ten recorded occupational groups. Some of these groups include managers, directors and seniors, misc. Professionals, associate professional and technical, administrative and secretarial, and skill trade among many others.
Another statistic that has shown significant improvement is that of the 473,000 people who are employed part time, only 16.1pc of these people were so because they could not find a full time job. In Q1 of 2016, this statistic was 40.5pc.
This change heavily correlates with the increase of people who are going back to school or scaling back in their career in order to take care of a family member or children. The Irish economy is set to continue growing and expanding opportunities for employment, so it is quite likely that by the time this group of people were to begin searching for work the economy would have expanding enough to accommodate them.
Although there has been substantial growth in jobs, there are still some issues that could halt growth or remove jobs from the market. The most common problem being Brexit and the mystery that surrounds how it will affect the economy.
According to the CSO, 1,778,500 of 2,301,900 or 77.3pc of currently employed population is in a permanent position. If we assume that these permanent positions are a vital aspect of business and will not be removed during possible economic changes associated with Brexit, there is a possibility that 22.7pc of the population could be at risk of job loss. This number, although much smaller than those not at risk, is still a significant chunk of the population and could lead to another high rate of unemployment in the future.
Hopefully the Irish budget of 2020 will have taken into account these possible issues and created provisions that can be enacted to combat the possible downfall.
