Home > Blog > Today in Ireland > Has Ireland too many low paid jobs?
DoChara's Ireland Blog
Random Writings about Ireland and the Irish
Friday
June 10 2005
Too Many Jobs?
Ireland now has more or less full employment and a record number of new jobs being created. The latest figures from the Central Statistics Office show that we have never had so many people in employment. There was 4.2% unemployment in the first quater of 2005, but the bulk of these were short-term unemployed, the figure for long-term unemployment is well under 2%.
Brilliant!
Well, yes, it is, but there is a potential downside looming on the horizon. A large number of these jobs are either provided directly by overseas companies based in Ireland or are in turn dependant on those jobs. One of the factors that brought these companies here was the presence of a large, young and very well educated work force. The jobs they created are in the main high skilled, in the IT, financial and pharamcuetical sectors primarily.
So, lots of good jobs but it is in the spin off that the real increase in job numbers came. The number of relatively poorly paid low skilled jobs in the hospitality, retail and services sectors has exploded, and there are simply not enough people to take them.
The construction industry is also a major employer, the largest in Ireland. It offers well paid work but is also a sector very exposed to the vagaries of changing economic circumstances. Immigration has not only helped, it has been essential.
The dangerous bit is how it effects the skill levels of the workforce. While at the top there is demand for highly skilled highly educated employees, at the bottom there is an even greater abundance of work for those with few skills and little education. When there were hardly any jobs your best chance was to hang on as long as you could in education, there was nothing much else to do anyway.
Now pretty much every teenager still at school has a part-time job and it is not hard to abandon education at an early stage and get immediate employment. Of course this will not be high paid employment and will have little in the way of prospects. But you can survive, even do well.
This is tempting an increasing number of young people who might otherwise finish school or go onto college to pack it in and just start working. Some of these people will flourish and rise to success but most will become trapped doing low-paid low-skilled work that exists only if there are enough people in high-skilled high-paid jobs.
You see the problem?
Comments on "Too Many Jobs?"
Comments are Closed
TrackBacks
Powered By: TrackBackr
