A discussion on this issue of a living wage has recently commenced in Ireland. The implementation of a living wage raises issues regarding its impact on different actors in society (employees, employers, civil society and the state). Similarly, successful implementation faces a number of challenges...

The latest GDP figures are disappointing (showing a contraction in 2013 of 0.3% due to both the 'patent cliff' and a stagnant domestic economy). However, the current account surplus has reached a record high of 6.6% of GDP. For comparison, in 2012 Germany had a surplus of 7% and the Netherlands had...

The March NERI seminar took place this afternoon in the INTO Learning Centre. Rory O'Farrell discussed recent trends in the Irish labour market, focusing on the hollowing out of middle paying jobs. Rory is a researcher at the NERI specialising in the labour market and macroeconomics. He previously...

The proportion of the Republic of Ireland’s children living in households whose income is below the 60% of median income poverty line has experienced limited change over the past few years. While the years 2006-08 recorded a decrease from 22.3% to 18.0%, by 2011 (the latest data available from the...

Data from the recent Earnings Hours and Employment Costs Survey show that recent trends in employee numbers (employee numbers exclude the self-employed) are consistent with a pattern of polarisation. The patterns are consistent with the effects of austerity combined with an underlying process of...

Saturday March 8th marks International Women’s Day, an opportune time to reflect on the relative socio-economic position of women in our society. While there are a myriad of facts, figures and data that allow us to explore this topic I am going to focus on three ‘gender gaps’ in this blog which uses...

Health has been in the news a lot recently. Accident and Emergency under pressure. Budgets running over. Private health insurance costs ever rising. Standards of care concerns to the fore. People worried about whether they will get the treatment they need when they need it and within their means...

The latest data from the CSO shows employment up roughly 60,000 since the same period of last year, getting close to levels last seen at the end of 2009 (and first seen back in 2005). Interestingly, of the increase in employment of 61,000, over three quarters almost (47,100) of the increase was for...

Youth Unemployment is an issue that is affecting nearly every developed country across the western world. While some labour market and output indicators may show some signs of recovery, youth unemployment is a reminder that the greatest recession to hit the developed world since the great depression...