The headline rate of unemployment in the Irish economy has been hovering around 4 per cent for over a year now, reflecting the tightness of the labour market since Covid and the continuation of the jobs-rich growth we’ve had for over a decade.
Yet last month it dipped to a new record low of 3.8 per cent, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO). The unemployment rate was last at 3.9 per cent between October 2000 and April 2001, at the height of the Celtic Tiger era. But a rate of 3.8 per cent has not been recorded before, at least not since records began.
Any rate below 4 per cent signals that the country is at full employment. The new record low in unemployment comes on the back of a new employment milestone. The number of people at work in the Irish economy rose to an all-time high of 2.6 million in the first quarter of this year, growing by more than 100,000 in the space of a year against a backdrop of supply chain disruption, inflation, job cuts across the tech sector and war.
These are big numbers for us. As recently as 1961 the Republic’s entire population was just 2.8 million.
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There’s little doubt the Irish economy seems to be on something of a winning streak. It has successfully navigated a sequences of crises – Brexit, the pandemic, war in Ukraine and inflation – and emerged relatively unscathed.
Growth is still strong, there are more people at work than ever before, exports are booming and household consumption continues to surprise on the upside. The corporate tax boom also means the Government is projected to generate up to €65 billion in budgetary surpluses over the next three years.
That said, households and businesses remain in the crosshairs of a crippling inflationary surge and the most aggressive rise in borrowing costs since the early 1980s. If the employment data wasn’t so positive things would be an awful lot worse.
