Sunday, May 24, 2020

25/5/20: Irish Employment: COVID19 Effects


Irish data on employment and labour force reported by CSO now comes in two streams: one is COVID pandemic-ignoring, and one accounting for potential effects of the pandemic. Here is the latest release snapshot, covering 1Q 2020:


Not to challenge CSO on their methodology that is based on a cautious interpretation of the COVID19-related new unemployment assistance claims as not being fully reflective of traditional unemployment. However, it is worth doing a simple exercise: taking data reported in the labour force survey for the period of January-March (1Q) 2020, and combining this with April 2020 monthly unemployment claims data. Here is what we get:

  • Officially, per 1Q data, there were 2,353,500 people in employment in Ireland at the of March 2020. 
  • COVID-19 adjusted, the above number was down to 2,070,371.
  • In April 2020, Number of persons out of work, estimated to include COVID-19 claim was 694,683, up 312,372 on March figure.
  • Adding April unemployment estimate to 1Q 2020 COVID-19 adjusted estimate of those in employment, estimated April 2020 employment levels in Ireland should be at around 1,758,000.
As illustrated in the chart:



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