The figures of those who never work at home rose by 74,200 people to 1,865,600. This exceeded the pre-Covid tally for the first time, indicating the move back to the office has accelerated.<\/p>\n
The size of the Irish labour force grew again, with 2,833,100 people in work at the end of 2025, up by 56,700, a growth rate of 2pc.<\/p>\n
There was a noticeable boost in the numbers in the last quarter, which means the slowdown seen in the spring did not mark the start of a jobs downturn, as some had feared.<\/p>\n
The employment rate for those aged between 15 and 64 years stood at 74.5pc in Q4 of last year, up slightly from 74.3pc at the end of 2024, according to labour force figures released by the Central Statistics Office.<\/p>\n
The participation rate stood at 65.8pc, which was a further slight increase for the year.<\/p>\n
It stood at 65.5pc at the end of 2024.<\/p>\n
In recent years, labour force participation has been helped by hybrid and remote working arrangements, which have allowed more women and people aged over 65 to take up jobs.<\/p>\n
There were 128,200 unemployed people aged between 15 and 74 years in the last quarter, a rate of 4.4pc, up from 4pc in the same quarter of 2024.<\/p>\n
In terms of sectors, jobs growth was led by construction, up 9pc, followed by industry, up 6.6pc and then the public sector. This was offset by small declines in wholesale\/retail and in hotels and restaurants, where employment fell by just under 1pc.<\/p>\n
That would be a robust expansion but a more sustainable pace<\/p>\n
Conall Mac Coille, Bank of Ireland\u2019s group chief economist, said: \u201cThe Q4 2025 out-turn gives us confidence in our view that employment growth is gradually slowing, from exceptional rates above 3pc, towards our forecast for 1.5pc growth in 2026 and 2027. That would be a robust expansion but a more sustainable pace.\u201d<\/p>\n
An estimated 582,600 or 20.6pc of those in employment worked part-time and 121,300 of these were classified as \u201cunderemployed\u201d, which means they would like to work more hours for more pay.<\/p>\n
The age group with the highest employment rate was the 45-54 years cohort, which had an 83.5pc participation rate, up by 1.7 percentage points. As would be expected, the lowest employment rate by age was in the 15-19-year-old cohort at 25.5pc.<\/p>\n
Kate English, chief economist at Deloitte Ireland, said the 2025 Q4 labour force survey showed that Ireland\u2019s employment market had softened last year, with an annual growth rate of 2pc.<\/p>\n
\u201cAlthough improved from Q3\u2019s surprise sharp fall, the labour market has entered a new phase of its cycle and it is reaffirming expectations of more moderate economic growth in Ireland in 2026,\u201d Ms English said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs we enter a new phase of the labour market, the question I am asked most is what is driving this. Is it cyclical or AI disruption?<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the Department of Finance\u2019s Economic Insights publication stated, it may be premature to attribute employment slowdowns to solely AI, but it also described Ireland\u2019s labour market as \u2018highly exposed to AI\u2019, meaning we may see an impact over the coming years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The figures of those who never work at home rose by 74,200 people to 1,865,600. This exceeded the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[2334,7863,158,11977,61,60,5243,43,19393],"class_list":{"0":"post-307521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ireland","8":"tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","9":"tag-bank-of-ireland","10":"tag-coronavirus","11":"tag-department-of-finance-dof","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-john-burns","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-working-from-home"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307521","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}