Home > Research > Research Areas > Labour Market
1

Labour Market

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.

Labour market researchers at the ESRI are involved in two major new surveys of employers and employees on behalf of the National Centre for Partnership and Performance (NCPP). The aim of the survey is to examine current trends and experiences of change in the workplace and to update The Changing Workplace Surveys previously conducted by the ESRI for the NCPP in 2003. The fieldwork is being conducted in partnership with Amárach Research.

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.  

Work continues in the National Pilot Profiling of the Unemployed project, carried out tin partnership with the Department of Social and Family Affairs. This large-scale national experiment, involving over 45,000 unemployed claimants, will help 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. In 2008, ESRI researchers were awarded a follow-on project to combine the profiling data with administrative records of the National Employment Action Programme to evaluate the impact of the range of activation measures currently implemented to assist unemployed individuals re-enter the workforce.

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