Analysis: "Phenomenal," said the woman at the other end of the phone. Sober sensible people that they are, Central Statistics Office (CSO) statisticians usually reserve that sort of language for tidal waves and passing comets.
But for the first time since CSO records began, the numbers employed exceeded two million as of last May.
A record 86,900 increase in the number of immigrants, plus a balance of births over deaths of 34,400 - both also record figures - was only partly offset by emigration of 17,000, giving rise to an increase of 104,100 in the population, another record.
The final record-breaker is that 9.8 per cent - practically one in 10 - of workers in the State are now foreign nationals.
To put matters in perspective, if these trends were replicated on a proportionate basis across the water, the UK's population would have risen by 1.2 million in just one year. Phenomenal? Undoubtedly. Sustainable? That's another matter. With unemployment remaining at the lowest rate in the EU, there doesn't appear to be a problem.
But, on closer inspection, the areas where jobs are being created raises questions.
Almost one-quarter of the extra 87,800 jobs in the economy come from the construction sector, bringing the total number of workers there to 262,700. One in five male workers now works in the sector, according to a separate survey of labour market trends published yesterday by Chambers Ireland. That is about one in eight workers of either gender, compared to one in 14 for the EU as a whole.
Let us put this in a way that even a politician can understand: were Irish employment in construction to return to anything close to EU levels, around 100,000 jobs could be lost.
Now let's assume that - under such unpleasant circumstances - the immigrant workers in the sector did the obliging thing by returning home. According to the CSO, only 32,500 workers are foreign nationals. That would leave about 70,000 Irish workers unemployed.
Let's imagine another scenario. In the sector euphemistically referred to as "other production industries" in CSO releases, the employment of Irish nationals fell by 12,500 as employment of foreign workers rose by 5,100. The hotel and restaurant sector shed 2,000 Irish workers while at the same time hiring 7,200 foreign workers. The sectors where the reverse is true (Irish workers gaining jobs as foreign nationals lose them) - agriculture and the public sector - are hardly bastions of the future economy.
So far, Irish job gains far outweigh job losses. But if the day comes when the cranes are lowered from the sky, building firms may decide not to send the Poles back home.
Instead, they may - for whatever reason - issue P45s to their Irish workers, just as is being done in the manufacturing sector now.
The traditional option of disguising rising unemployment by increasing public sector employment may not be feasible, given the constraints imposed by Europe and a changed attitude to the public sector generally.
One of the more boring-sounding statistical releases it may be. But the Quarterly National Household Survey may in future become even more phenomenal than the update released yesterday.