Under-employment continues to be a major long-term issue for Irish workers. The broadest measure of unemployment (whereby people are either unemployed, or working part-time but wishing to work full-time, or discouraged workers) remains at 23.5%, down from a peak of 25.8% in mid-2012. In the third quarter of 2013; 139,300 workers were under-employed.
However, underemployment is not just due to the recession. It is a long term trend. In 1992 workers in Hotels and Restaurants sector worked an above average week of 42.3 hours (compared to an average of 41.4 hours for the whole economy) and Wholesale and Retail workers worked 39.4 hours per week. Since 1992 this has steadily declined. In 2010 average weekly hours in the Accommodation and food service activities had fallen to 24.9 and 29.4 in the Wholesale and Retail sector.
Under-employment particularly affects the low-paid (as explained here and here) who are caught in a vice of low pay and low working hours. Recent rostering practices make life more difficult for workers in the service sector. Rather than employ workers on a full time basis, employers prefer to have a 'pool' of workers to choose from, who are only given their roster at the beginning of the week. This makes it harder for workers to plan their week, and makes it impossible to take on a second job.
In Canada this has been countered by mandating that employers pay workers for a minimum of three hours of any shift (even if the worker comes in for an hour, but is told to go home because the business is not busy). In Ireland, a recent labour court recommendation included 'banded-hours' whereby workers contracts include a minimum number of hours they will work each week. These are positive developments that can help counter the long term trend towards involuntarily short working hours.
More information on vacancies can be seen in indicator 2.5a of the latest NERI Quarterly Economic Facts.