One-tenth of all employees are now immigrants
Friday February 17 2006
Sheehan
ONE in 10 workers now come from outside the State, with immigrants from Poland, Lithuania and Latvia fuelling strong job growth last year.
Irish workers are not being displaced by such foreign workers, with the sole exception of the food industry, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
Employment grew by 87,000, or 4.7pc, last year, the highest level of growth since the heyday of the Celtic Tiger in 1999/2000. Foreign labour accounted for half of those jobs.
Growing
People from the EU accession states were the fastest growing cohort in the workforce, with numbers doubling from just under 30,000 at the end of 2004 to 65,000 a year later, the Quarterly National Household Survey shows.
The number of non-Irish workers amounted to 9pc of the workforce at the end of 2005 compared with 7pc one year earlier, said CSO director Gerry O'Hanlon, with Poles, Lithuanians and Latvians dominating the new arrivals.
The figures show that except for the food industry, there was no evidence of displacement of Irish workers by non-nationals, he said. The number of Irish people employed in food processing fell by 5,300, whereas the numbers of foreigners working in it increased by 2,700.
This did not mean the Irish were being laid off from the food industry in favour of foreign labour, Ibec senior economist Fergal O'Brien said. "It is not the case that these Irish workers are moving onto the live register. In fact they are moving on to better-paid unskilled jobs in the construction sector."
An extra 10,000 foreign workers took up jobs in construction last year - an increase of 60pc since 2004 - but an additional 16,000 Irish workers also joined the building trade in the same period. This belied claims that they were being squeezed off sites.
The CSO gave a "tentative estimate" of 253,000 non-nationals aged over 14 living in Ireland, but Mr O'Hanlon said the real figure could be as high as 300,000 because of language and cultural barriers in surveying foreigners.
Shift
A fifth of workers in the hospitality industry are now foreign, as are one in eight in construction and manufacturing. Last year saw another major shift. For the first time, more than half of all married women in Ireland went to work, with a corresponding fall in the number of housewives.
There was increased participation in the workforce from all age groups, particularly women. Part-time work was on the up, mainly in shops, financial services, education and hospitality.
Employers' group Ibec said the figures showed a very buoyant labour market which had provided good job opportunities for immigrants and Irish people.
