Changes in the Labour Force

The CSO have just released the Q1 2011 Quarterly National Household Survey (QNHS).  The headline number is that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate has fallen from 14.8% to 14.0%.  Here we will continue our series that looks at the composition by nationality of the labour force.

First up, the number of non-Irish nationals in the labour force.

Since peaking at 366,000 at the end of 2007, the number of non-Irish nationals has declined by nearly one-third and now stands at 248,000.  There has been a reduction of 143,000 in the number of non-Irish nationals in employment but an increase of only 24,000 in the number of unemployed non-Irish nationals to 45,000.  In fact over the last two quarters both the number of non-Irish nationals employed and unemployed has been falling.

As a percentage of the labour force the number of non-Irish nationals is now back to levels last seen in 2005.

As in previous quarters the biggest driver of these changes has been workers from the EU-Accession states who account for more than half of the drop of the number of non-Irish nationals in the labour force.

Although the numbers of unemployed non-Irish nationals has been falling the unemployment rate among non-Irish nationals (18.1%) remains higher than among Irish nationals (13.1%) 

Of the 296,000 total unemployed, 45,000 are non-Irish nationals and 251,000 are Irish-nationals.  The proportion of those unemployed who are non-Irish nationals has been steadily declining since 2009. 

In the first quarter of 2009, 22% of those unemployed were non-Irish nationals.  This has now fallen to 15%.  The final graph in this post gives a breakdown of the unemployment rates.