The latest employment figures, covering the period from December to February last, show that the jobs boom has continued into the early months of the current year.
First of all, because until this time 20 years ago our birth rate was high - and still rising - and because we have recently been experiencing an annual net immigration of over 10,000 adults each year, the number of people of working age has been increasing by around 50,000 a year.
Moreover, the proportion of the population at work has also been increasing, adding a further 10,000 each year to the labour force. Almost all of this increase in the participation rate - the proportion of people aged 15 and over who are at work - has been female, the vast majority of them women aged 45 to 60.
Finally, during this period unemployment has been falling by almost 30,000 a year.
That is the combination of factors that has made possible the recent extraordinary employment increase of about 85,000 a year, representing an annual employment growth rate of 5.5 per cent.
Unemployment has fallen by over two-fifths in the past two years, bringing it down to slightly more than 4.5 per cent. Now that is quite close to the level of "frictional unemployment" - the small amount of unemployment that inevitably arises as people change jobs. And that means that we cannot much longer count on continuing to draw 30,000 new workers each year from the ranks of the unemployed.
Moreover, as the number of 18-year-olds continues to decline - it has fallen by 3,000 in the past two years and within the next three years will drop by a further 7,500 - the numbers completing their education and entering the labour market will fall in the next few years by 15 per cent.
Indeed, during 1999 the increase in the total stock of students aged 15 or over in the educational sector was only 1,000 and the number of male students actually fell both in 1998 and 1999 - a fact obscured by a continued rise in the number of women students. This is a most disturbing trend, reflecting the attraction for male students of early employment entry at the expense of completing their education.
A further source of concern in relation to the pending reduction in the flow into the labour market is the possibility that, when we exclude the asylum-seekers whom we are most perversely refusing to allow to work during the years that they have to wait here to have their fate decided, the number of adult immigrants coming to jobs here may also now be falling due to the unresolved housing crisis.
Given this clear prospect of a much lower workforce growth rate in the years immediately ahead, there can be no doubt about the persistent inflationary dangers we face if we fail to slow down our rate of economic growth, and thus damp down the demand for a continued rapid increase in the numbers of people at work.
Where is all this demand coming from?
Employment in the industrial sector is now growing by an average of barely 2 per cent a year, but in the construction industry, employment increased by 12 per cent during 1998 and by almost 20 per cent last year. Moreoever, the financial and business services sector has been increasing its workforce rapidly - by about 12.5 per cent a year. And over the last two years transport and communications have also been expanding their employment by some 8 per cent a year.
The latest Labour Survey publication also provides some interesting new data on the growth of various occupational groups in our workforce. The fastest growing occupations, expanding at 8-9 per cent a year, are "craft and related activities", and "personal and protective services".
Next come "associate professional and technical services" and clerical and secretarial work, with an annual growth rate of more than 6 per cent. The higher professions and the sales workforce are both growing by about 5 per cent a year, while plant and machine operatives and managers and administrators are categories with slower annual growth rates of 3-4 per cent.
The growth rate of female employment is highest in the case of "personal and protective services", but it is also running at 78 per cent a year in the case of clerical and secretarial services and associate professional and technical services, as well as in what used to be called the "higher professions".
In these latter professions, the number of women is rapidly catching up on the number of men: it seems probable that by the middle of this decade women will outnumber men in this remunerative employment sector.
Also particularly striking is the rapid increase in women in managerial and administrative posts - during the past two years at four times the percentage growth rate for men in this sector. For, although in 1998 the number of women in such posts was less than a quarter of the number of men, during the two subsequent years there was an increase of 11,500 in the number of women managers and administrators, as against only 8,400 in the case of men.
OF course, it is marvellous that we have come so near to full employment, which for so many generations remained an impossible dream for the Irish people. But there is still a quite insufficient realisation that, given that this goal is about to be attained, the policies of successive governments that have achieved this remarkable success now need radical revision. Our current inflation rate, more than 5 per cent, makes it clear that the Government has been disastrously slow in adjusting its policies to this new reality.
The increase in consumer prices is not solely due to government budgetary policy: the rise in oil prices has also been an important factor. But, in terms of economic policy, it is quite impossible to justify the introduction of an expansionary budget last December, in the middle of a boom, especially in a country which as a member of EMU cannot offset such fiscal folly by means of higher interest rates or through adjustments to the exchange rate.
It almost seems that the Government has forgotten that a year and a half ago it brought us into the EMU - or else it has completely failed to understand the significance of that decision.
In last week's article on non-religious education I inadvertently upset some people involved in Educate Together multi-denominational schools by suggesting that these schools are intended to serve the need of families who wish their children to be brought up in a Christian but not denominational atmosphere. It appears that, in contrast to Northern Ireland's Christian interdenominational schools, such schools in the Republic promote no ethical background above any other.