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Labour Market

ISSA award for ESRI work on profiling

The International Social Security Association (ISSA) has awarded a certificate of merit to ESRI's work for the Department of Social and Family Affairs on Development of a customer Profiling model to assist in Case Management and Activation.  Full document.


Policy Conference

ESRI Policy Conference, 2009: "The Labour Market in Recession"  on 30/04/2009.

Following more than a decade of very rapid growth in employment, the labour market deteriorated sharply during 2008. In the first quarter of 2009, there were 1,965,600 persons in employment, an annual decrease of 158,500 or 7.5%. This was the first time since 2006 that total employment fell below 2 million. Unemployment fell from less than 5% of the labour force in 2008, quarter 1, to over 10% in the first quarter of 2009. 

Current labour market research focuses on:

  • Labour market dynamics - transitions into employment from unemployment, school, home.

  • The impact of education and training on employment and earnings.

  • Equality and the labour market.

  • Working conditions, including wages, hours of work, job security.

Field-work was completed on two major surveys of the workplace in Ireland, one of employers, the other of employees, on behalf of the National Centre for Partnership and Performance. The surveys capture employers’ experiences and strategies and employees’ experiences and attitudes in the midst of the recession. The results of the survey will provide the basis for analysis of changes in the workplace, and the extent of development of workplace strategies in pursuit of enhanced organisational effectiveness and improved competitiveness.

Direct access to the micro-data from the large-scale National Employment Surveys has made possible a wide range of work on a range of topics, including the gender wage gap, as well as new analyses of the impact of labour market institutions on earnings, and the public-private sector wage gap.

The labour market group is continuing its work on the impact of education and training, and a series of papers on the labour market impact of education and training in Ireland and elsewhere are published in international journals.  

The report on National Profiling of the Unemployed in Ireland was published in 2009. This project, carried out in partnership with the Department of Social and Family Affairs (DSFA), and involving over 45,000 unemployed claimants, helps to identify those unemployed people most likely to experience difficulty gaining employment and at greatest risk of entering long-term unemployment. This project is particularly relevant at a time of deteriorating labour market conditions and the profiling is to be implemented by the DFSA with ongoing advice from ESRI researchers. These researchers have also been working on a follow-on project that involves combining the profiling data with administrative records of the National Employment Action Programme to evaluate the impact of the range of activation measures currently being implemented to assist unemployed individuals re-enter the workforce. These research projects offer policymakers essential information to inform the allocation and targeting of effective and appropriate programmes for the unemployed.

Future labour market research will build on existing work and focus on emerging issues utilising new data sets:

  • Employment and unemployment in the recession.

  • Transitions to employment from unemployment, education and training.

  • Human capital, the knowledge economy and social progress.

  • Labour and skill shortages and their economic impact.

  • Labour market institutions.

  • Equality, including gender, disability, immigrant workers.


Programme Coordinator: Philip O’Connell