Tom Kitt (Dublin South, Fianna Fail)

The Central Statistics Office publishes quarterly releases on earnings in the following sectors: industry, distributive trades and business services, the financial sector and the public sector. The latest figures available are for the fourth quarter of 2005. They showed an annual increase of 3.4% in average weekly earnings for all employees in the industrial sector, 5.7% in the distributive trades, 5.6% in the business services sector, 5.1% in the financial sector and 6.2% in the public sector, excluding health. The consumer price index, also published by the CSO, rose by 2.5% in the 12-month period to December 2005.

The earnings figures for the industrial sector also include a breakdown for broad occupational categories. Weekly earnings increased by 3.1% for manual workers and by 3.7% for clerical and managerial workers in industry between the fourth quarters of 2004 and 2005. Further details of hours per week and average hourly earnings are available for manual workers in industry. They show an annual increase of 2.1% in earnings per hour for manual industrial workers and an increase of 1% in their average hours worked per week.

The trends in industrial earnings represent the situation for about one sixth of all employees. The industrial sector accounts for 266,000 employees, out of a total of 1,653,400 employees across all sectors, as measured by the latest quarterly national household survey for quarter four of 2005.

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