Earnings in the services sector increased by 5% in the year up to June 1999, according to the first in a new series of data from the Irish government's Central Statistics Office (CSO). Previously, the only earnings data available had been for manufacturing industry, leaving a major gap in labour market information. The new series provides a weekly average earnings figure for 10 sectors in distribution and business services: retail; wholesale; motor trade; accommodation/catering; land transport; other transport activity; post/telecommunications; real estate/machinery renting; and computing activity/research and development.
In March 2000, for the first time, Ireland's Central Statistics Office published earnings data for the services sector as well as manufacturing. The data show a 5% annual increase in the 12 months to June 1999.
Earnings in the services sector increased by 5% in the year up to June 1999, according to the first in a new series of data from the Irish government's Central Statistics Office (CSO). Previously, the only earnings data available had been for manufacturing industry, leaving a major gap in labour market information. The new series provides a weekly average earnings figure for 10 sectors in distribution and business services: retail; wholesale; motor trade; accommodation/catering; land transport; other transport activity; post/telecommunications; real estate/machinery renting; and computing activity/research and development.
The sectors with the highest earnings increases in the 12 months to June 1999 were the motor trade (6.83%), accommodation/catering (6.6%) and real estate/machinery renting (6.47%). The retail trade, the largest single subsector covered, with 53,000 employees, had a 6.16% average increase over the 12 months.
Two sectors fell significantly below the trend - post/telecommunications (2.13%) and "other transport activity" (which includes aviation) at 0.05%. This may be explained by heavy recruitment at the entry-level grades in the large firms in these sectors, which could have kept the average wage cost down.
More average increases were recorded in wholesale (5.36%), land transport (5.43%) and computing/research and development (4.72%). The figure for the computing/research and development sector appears surprising at first glance, given the anecdotal evidence of wage inflation among skilled information technology staff in Ireland. One possible explanation is that this anecdotal evidence may apply more to the "high flyers" in that sector, while the CSO figure includes all skill levels.
This services sector data gives a less detailed breakdown than that which is available for manufacturing, which provides figures for about 30 subsectors. Neither are the new services figures broken down by gender or occupational group, which the manufacturing figures are. There are no immediate plans to supply a more detailed breakdown of services sector earnings - the new data available is based on an extra question added to an existing questionnaire.
The new data also covers only those working 30 hours per week or more in enterprises with five employees or more. This group was 272,100-strong in June 1999, and the CSO's surveys covered about 100,000 of these workers.
Eurofound recommends citing this publication in the following way.
Eurofound (2000), Earnings increase by 5% in services sector, article.
