The state of Northern Ireland’s economy is often measured by complex statistics — but at its heart, it’s about whether people can live well and businesses can thrive. We often dont remember this, because so often discussions about the economy are buried in jargon.
But the economy isn’t just about statistics and it's certainly not jargon - it’s about your rent or mortgage. It’s about how much your weekly shop costs – the price of bread, eggs, cheese, fuel, electricity, heating oil. It’s whether your job feels steady and whether your pay lasts the month. It’s about whether your work is secure, what kind of job you have, and whether it pays enough to live on. It’s about the cost of childcare and elder care, whether you can change jobs or retrain, whether your time is your own, and whether there’s real opportunity for your kids. It’s about how easy or hard it is to stay afloat - or move ahead. The economy is what shapes that daily grind of balancing, managing and the standard of living that you have and those around you have.
And if you run a business, the economy isn’t just a backdrop - it shapes everything: your customer base, your costs, your workforce, your margins. But the relationship works both ways. The decisions businesses make - how they invest, how they manage people, what the business does, what kind of jobs they offer, whether they train their workers, whether upskilling and reskilling forms part of the model of innovation - shape the wider economy too.
But people and businesses aren’t the only players here. The Government is the invisible hand and sets the tone for the economy that we have. Through its decisions, it influences what kind of economy we build, who it serves, and who gets left behind.
It decides where to invest - in infrastructure, in education, in skills - and that helps determine which sectors grow. The incentives it offers shape business behaviour: whether to innovate or stand still, whether to train staff and strive to compete on the basis of innovation or chase short-term gains.
Of course, Northern Ireland is a devolved region of the United Kingdom. But the Executive has control over many of the levers that shape day-to-day economic life - from skills and infrastructure to employment law and economic development. But there are limits. We don’t control much of taxation policy nor do we control interest rates. If Liz Truss taught us anything it’s exactly the enormity of the influence these factors have over business investment, household incomes, and the cost of living. We also have limited power over the shape of the global economy, and the bigger forces and mega-trends at play. So, while the Executive can steer, it doesn’t always control the tides. That’s why the NI Executive getting the most out of the powers they do have, and looking to how other similar, more successful economies, use theirs, matters.
The Northern Ireland Executive is trying to focus on four big things to help the economy grow: productivity; good jobs; regional balance and decarbonisation. In lay man’s terms, this means that the aim is to make businesses more productive so we get more done with the resources we have; creating better quality, more secure jobs so people feel they have a decent standard of living; and making sure that both cities and rural areas get a fair share of economic opportunities; all while moving our economic activity to be greener and cleaner in order to protect the environment.
Let’s focus for now on productivity.
Productivity. We talk about it a lot. But still, we rarely stop to ask what it actually means. For many, it sounds like jargon. But at its core, productivity is about value: how much we produce for what we put in. It has two key inputs - capital and labour. Capital is our investment in things like machinery, technology, infrastructure. Labour is people - the time, effort and skill people bring to their jobs.
Labour productivity isn’t just about how hard people work - it’s about how work is organised and supported to maximise the value added. It depends on both the people and the tools that they have. Skilled workers can only do so much without the right equipment, systems, or infrastructure behind them. When jobs are well-designed, and when workers are supported with technology, training, and working conditions, more gets done - not through strain, or stress, or intensified workloads, but through smarter working. It’s about balancing the demands placed on people with the resources - that allow them to deliver.
When we talk about boosting productivity, the focus often falls on sectoral change - and for good reason. Some sectors are simply more productive than others. Jobs in areas like advanced manufacturing, professional services or life sciences typically produce more value per hour worked than roles in low-margin sectors such as hospitality. So, shifting more of our economy into higher value-added sectors - and growing the number of these ‘productive’ jobs - is rightly a key goal.
But it’s not all about a sectoral shift. Because overall productivity performance depends not only on what we do as an economy, but also on how well we do with what we have. Economists call this the difference between between-sector and within-sector productivity. It’s within sectors, across the full range of jobs we already have, that some of the biggest gains can be made.
This is where the good jobs agenda comes in. The conditions under which people work - how their jobs are designed, the level of autonomy they have, the tools they’re given, how much security and voice they have directly affects how productive they are. Even in high-value sectors, poorly organised work, with a high stress environment, or alack of training can hold people back. And in lower-paid sectors, well-designed jobs with good management where worker demands and resources are well balanced can lead to significant productivity and job quality improvements.
Improving productivity isn’t just about capital and skills. It also depends on how work is experienced and structured. The 2024 UK Skills and Employment Survey which includes a robust sample from Northern Ireland offers some of the clearest evidence yet that how much worker voice and participation have in their jobs matters, not just for their well-being but for motivation and organisational performance.
The Skills and Employment survey looked at three dimensions of worker participation: task discretion (autonomy in how tasks are performed), semi-autonomous teamwork, and organisational influence. Each was linked to better business outcomes, but the strongest results came where workers felt they had genuine influence over organisational decisions.
Workers with high task discretion reported up to an 18 percentage-point increase in enthusiasm, satisfaction, and value alignment compared to those with little autonomy. Those with strong organisational influence reported a 25-point increase in willingness to work harder and a 28-point increase in taking initiative to improve how things are done. In short: employees are far more engaged and proactive when they feel their voice matters and when they believe their views can help shape decisions.
Employers consistently agree that worker voice matters to them, and that they understand the importance of it for not just worker health - but they also are cognisant of the fact that it also does affect their bottom line.
However, despite the growth in consultative committees, meetings where employees can express their views, there remains a significant gap between formal channels for participation and the real influence workers feel they have over decisions that affect their work. In 2024, while 74% of employees reported the existence of consultative meetings in their organisation, only 28% believed they actually had influence over those decisions.
More concerning is the long-term decline in employee influence, which has fallen steadily since the early 2000s and now sits near its lowest point in nearly thirty years. This decline persists despite growth in participation structures, highlighting a key limitation: many consultative forums primarily serve as channels for downward communication rather than true levers for employee voice and impact. Added to this, is that the same survey also shows over a third of employees working in non-unionised organisations report that they would vote to establish a union if they were given the chance.
This growing disconnect underscores why strengthening trade unions and independent worker representation is an essential component of the Good Jobs Bill and is backed by evidence. It’s not just the results from this survey. There is broad consensus within the literature that trade union voice offers the most effective and meaningful means of employee influence.
The Skills and Employment Survey 2024 reconfirms that genuine organisational influence is strongly linked to employee well-being and motivation - critical drivers of productivity and the creation of good jobs. For the Good Jobs Bill to deliver fair, secure, and productive workplaces, it must prioritise enhancing trade union rights and independent worker voice as the foundation for real participation.