Written answers
Tuesday, 2 July 2019
Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection
Gender Balance
Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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677. To ask the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection further to Parliamentary Question No. 96 of 25 June 2019, her plans to undertake a gendered analysis of full employment to establish the gap between male and female participation in the workforce separate from the Central Statistics Office. [28154/19]
Regina Doherty (Meath East, Fine Gael)
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There is no commonly agreed measure of what constitutes full employment for Ireland. The CSO is responsible for determining the employment and unemployment rates for the State, and the Labour Force Survey (LFS) is the official source of employment estimates in the State.
The CSO publishes detailed tables on the LFS on a quarterly basis, and these tables include a gender breakdown. The releases from the CSO are closely monitored by my Department, including the gender breakdowns of employment and unemployment.
Examples of breakdowns produced by the CSO include the Labour Market Participation Rates and the Unemployment Rates for men and women; the results from the last five LFS releases are shown in the following table.
| Q1 2018 | Q2 2018 | Q3 2018 | Q4 2018 | Q1 2019 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Male | Participation Rate | 68.2 | 68.6 | 69.0 | 68.3 | 68.1 |
| Female | Participation Rate | 55.1 | 56.4 | 56.4 | 56.2 | 56.1 |
| Male | Unemployment Rate | 5.8 | 6.2 | 5.9 | 5.4 | 5.1 |
| Female | Unemployment Rate | 5.5 | 5.8 | 6.1 | 5.4 | 4.4 |
The latest LFS results show that over the year to Q1 2019, female labour market participation increased by 1%, while the female unemployment rate decreased by 1.1%. These are both positive developments and highlight the increasing participation of women in the labour market.
The LFS is also used to monitor gender equality in the Labour Market at an EU level. This includes the overall unemployment rates of men and women, as well as analysis of the long-term unemployment rates of men and women. These are illustrated in the following table for the year 2018.
| EU average | Ireland | |
|---|---|---|
| Male Unemployment | 6.6 | 5.8 |
| Female Unemployment | 7.1 | 5.7 |
| Male Long Term Unemployment | 2.8 | 2.3 |
| Female Long Term Unemployment | 3.0 | 1.8 |
The CSO's Monthly Unemployment release also details the unemployment rate for men and women; in June 2019, the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for women was 4.3% and 4.7% for men. This compares to June 2018, when the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 5.7% for women and 6.0% for men.
Female labour market participation is below that of males, but has increased year-on-year. The unemployment rate for females has fallen year-on-year, and at a faster rate than for men. The detail reported by the CSO in this regard provides great depth, breadth, and regularity of the statistics produced by CSO on gender participation and outcomes in the Labour Market.
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