Improving women's access to the labour market could create 65,000 jobs
A new paper ( available here) highlights some of the most prominent features of the Irish labour market; a polarised labour market with relatively low labour market participation for women. The implication for this is that, by increasing labour market access for women, roughly 65,000 jobs could be...
Monday Blog: Why should taxpayers pay for ‘free’ higher education?
Why indeed? Data published by the CSO and OECD show much better earnings and employment outcomes for third level graduates. The cost of providing higher education is not small. At approximately €9,000 on average per student per annum the true total cost varies by location, type of course and field...
Monday Blog: The temptation of Odysseus
In the ancient Greek epic poem Odyssey, the ship of Odysseus sails past dangerous rocks as his ears are tortured by the sweet song of the Sirens. This song drove Odysseus mad with desire, and his sailors had to tie him to the ship rail, prohibiting him from giving in to temptation. If it were not...
Monday Blog: Poverty, Wages and Violence
The publication – coincidentally – of two reports in Northern Ireland in the last week has drawn attention to the importance of wages in the Northern economy. While the reports received very extensive media coverage in the Northern media, there was very little in the South. This is regrettable as...
A Budget for the few
Budget 2014 announced some interesting measures for pensioners and savers but overall the economic strategy remains as it was. Government fiscal policy remains committed to reductions in government expenditure extending to the end of the decade despite serious concerns over the sustainability of the...
The Recession and Child Poverty
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...
Recent labour market changes consistent with polarisation
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...
Women in Ireland: Better educated, living longer but paid less
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...
Monday Blog: Health a public good?
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...
Employment of young women down 17,100
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...