Dublin Opinion

This is the part I meant to get to yesterday, but I found myself going off on tangents instead. With regard to background to the Quarterly Household Survey Q1 2009, its samples and definitions, please have a look at the previous post.

with regard to the following statistics:

“In Employment” is defined as “persons who worked in the week before the survey for one hour or more for payment or profit, including work on the family farm or business and all persons who had a job but were not at work because of illness, holidays, etc. in the week.

“Unemployed” is defined as “persons who, in the week before the survey, were without work and available for work within the next two weeks, and had taken specific steps, in the preceding four weeks, to find work.

The “Labour Force” comprises persons employed plus unemployed.

Taking the labour force as all persons between the ages of 15 and 64 who are either employed or unemployed, in the first quarter (Q1) of 2008 around 34% of that labour force held a third level qualification of some sort. One year later, that figure had risen to around 37%.

In Q1 2008, 23% of that labour force held a third level degree or higher. By Q1 2009, that figure stood at 24.6%.

Overall, the estimated labour force shrunk by 43,300 - or 1.98%.

Even after the number of people entering the workforce for the first time, and the number of people retiring, have worked on cancelling part of each other’s aggregates, there’s still a figure of 43,000 or so who are not working, but who have not declared themselves as unemployed for the purposes of the survey. Possibly - indeed, more than likely - it’s a sign of emigration. But, if it is, the emigration is not taking place among those with a third level qualification - at least, not in such numbers as to affect the national aggregates.

And although unemployment for those with a third level qualification has risen in Ireland, employment among that sector of the workforce has risen as well - a point raised by Seán O’Riain in his post for Progressive Economy.

Anyway, let’s have a look at the stats.

As I said, overall the labour force declined by 43,300, from Q1 2008 to Q1 2009. But, as you can see, this decline had a distinct educational bias. Here’s the change in labour force by aggregate of educational attainment.

Now, it makes common sense that with an increase in third-level-educated workers in the labour force, during a time of economic depression, that we’re going to see a related increase in unemployment for third-level-educated workers.

It’s a funny thing, common sense. Look up at the sky and common sense tells you the Sun goes around the Earth. Look at the figures for Pat Kenny’s salary and common sense tells you it must be because of his talent. Then you see the evidence, and common sense starts to get, well, a little bit General Zod.

There has been an increase in unemployment among those with a third-level qualification. There has also been an increase in employment among those with a third-level qualification - the only sector of the labour force to experience such a rise in the past year.

Employment fell by an estimated 156,200, from Q1 2008 to Q1 2009. This was a drop of 7.52% on the Q1 2008 figure. However, employment among those with a third-level-non-degree qualification rose by 3.17%, while employment among those with a third-level degree or higher rose by 1.5%. By way of contrast, employment fell by 18.02% among those with a primary school or below educational attainment, and by 16.25% among those with a lower secondary educational attainment.

The above figures are in line with what we saw in yesterdays post regarding the rise in professionals and associate professionals, as well as increases in professional-dominated sectors such as education; health and social services; public service; financial, insurance and real estate activities; and information and communication.

The changes in the labour force also reflect the decline in employment in broad occupation groups such as sales; craft and related; plant and machine operatives; clerical and administrative; and unskilled manual work.

In terms of unemployment, the change in figures between Q1 2008 and Q1 2009 is quite dramatic. Unemployment among higher secondary and third-level-educated persons has more than doubled. Among post-leaving-cert-educated persons, it has more than tripled.

Finally, the unemployment rates among each educational attainment sector reveals that, far from the current recession being a “carnage” for the middle class in Ireland, the middle class is holding its own so far.

This is not to dismiss in any way the individual problems and hardships that are being borne by those who find themselves unemployed - regardless of his or her standard of education. Rather, it is merely to state the facts of the situation, and to counter the attempts for whatever reason by middle class journalists and commentators to somehow hijack this recession as their own personal Hades.

The Irish middle class is experiencing the recession, but the idea that its suffering is somehow the defining narrative of all of this is simply delusional - no more delusional, it has to be said, than believing in “gearing” and housing bubbles, and private sector “efficiency”, but delusional, nonetheless.

Enjoy.