In this Report Series No. 39, NERI Co-director Paul Mac Flynn summarises and analyses the main results from labour market statistics in 2024 and puts them in the context of the 10 years leading up to them.
2024 was a year of little change for Northern Ireland’s labour market. There was continued, modest improvement in the main indicators of participation and employment in the labour market. It is also clear that we are still processing very significant impacts from the Covid-19 pandemic, although many have faded away. The pandemic had the effect of closing many of the gendered gaps in our labour market, many of these reverted to pre-pandemic levels shortly after, while in other cases the pandemic merely interrupted changes that were already underway.