WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT TRAINING AT WORK? ESRI Research Bulletin 2009/1/4

There has been renewed interest in recent years in education and training as instruments for economic progress, fuller employment and social integration. This coincides with a new emphasis on the need for ‘life long learning’, to respond to changes in the organisation and technology of production and service delivery and to counter the socially disruptive effects of increased labour market flexibility. In this context, the role of job-related training is of particular importance. Philip O’Connell and Jean-Marie Jungblut* review the available empirical research on the subject of workplace training and how it affects individual earnings and career development, as well as wider organisational performance

Women Returning to Employment, Education and Training in Ireland - An Analysis of Transitions

Recent improvements in the Irish labour market have led to a substantial increase in the labour force participation rate of women in Ireland. Part of this increase has been fuelled by women moving from the home into paid employment. Much of the existing research on labour market activity among Irish women has focused on cross-sectional analyses of the stock of labour market participants. In this paper we aim to address some of the gaps in the literature by investigating the transition from home to work, and from home to education, training and employment schemes among women in Ireland during the period 1994 to 1999. We adopt a dynamic approach by drawing on the nationally representative longitudinal data in the Living in Ireland Survey. This allows us to provide, for the first time, a representative profile of returners, and to formally model the transition process in terms of supply and demand factors. The analysis also investigates the factors associated with the return to part-versus full-time work. Our analysis reveals that about one-quarter of those engaged full-time in home duties in 1994 had made a transition to paid work within the six-year period 1994-1999. The study identifies a number of key factors that influence the transition from home to work or education, training and employment schemes, including, on the supply side, age, education, previous work experience, time out of the labour force, and the presence of young children in the household, and on the demand side, macro-economic conditions and urban versus rural residence.

EUROPEAN MIGRATION NETWORK. IMMIGRATION OF INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS TO THE EU: IRELAND

This report is the Irish contribution to the EMN study on the ‘Immigration of International (non-EEA) Students to the EU’. This EMN study topic is particularly timely in the Irish case, as it follows a period of significant policy activity in this domain throughout 2010 and 2011. In September 2010, the Irish Government launched its first international education strategy, entitled Investing in Global Relationships: Ireland’s International Education Strategy 2010-15. The publication of the strategy was the culmination of efforts to facilitate a more joined-up approach to the provision of international education, with efforts co-ordinated by a High-Level Group on International Education. The Irish contribution to the EMN study is set within this overarching context

Discrimination in the Labour Market: Nationality, Ethnicity and the Recession. ESRI Research Bulletin 2015/2/2

A growing body of research shows that immigrants suffer multiple disadvantages in the Irish labour market, with lower employment, higher unemployment and lower wages than Irish nationals. But what effect did Ireland’s economic crisis have on discrimination? We investigated whether non-Irish nationals were more likely to report experience of discrimination in the labour market after the crisis hit

DID IRELAND BECOME MORE UNEQUAL DURING THE BOOM? ESRI Research Bulletin 2009/2/4

The Irish economy almost doubled in size between 1990 and 2000 in terms of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), leading to a rapid convergence of GDP per capita with the EU average, and dramatic growth in employment and incomes. Economists writing about the impact of technology on the labour market in recent years have tended to emphasise the idea that as an economy grows, technology is biased in favour of skilled workers and against unskilled workers (This is termed skill-biased technical change, SBTC.) A large body of evidence documents a striking correlation between the adoption of computer-based technologies and the increased use of university-educated labour. The idea of SBTC has primarily been used to explain rising wage inequality in, for example, the UK and the US. Has rapid growth in Ireland led to a similar rise in wage inequality, favouring higher educated workers – and if not, what factors have tended to offset the influence of skill-biased technological change? These issues have been investigated by Seamus McGuinness, Frances McGinnity and Philip O’Connell in a recent paper.† They draw on data from the Living in Ireland Survey for 1994, 1997 and 2001 to examine the consequences of the boom for wage dispersion and returns to education in Ireland

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL PARTNERSHIP ON IRELAND’S COMPETITIVENESS. ESRI Research Bulletin 2010/3/3

Social partnership has been a central facet of Irish society since 1987. In order to support economic growth, a principal objective of the partnership process has been to achieve moderate increases in wages in exchange for reductions in income tax to boost take home pay. To achieve this outcome, one of the core elements of social partnership is a centralised wage agreement negotiated between the Irish Government, the main employer bodies and Trade Unions. These wage agreements, known as the National Wage Agreements (NWA), have been identified in a number of studies as having played a pivotal role in the remarkable revival that occurred in the Irish economy in the late 1980s, and the considerable growth that took place in the country over the ‘Celtic Tiger’ era. In particular, most of the research indicates that the wage restraint attained under the pay agreements enhanced the country’s competitiveness, through lower labour costs, and this consequently led to both significant employment and economic growth. Real unit labour costs in Ireland have fallen in most years since the social partnership process began in 1987 Over the 1987-2002 period, unit labour costs fell by around 25 per cent in Ireland compared to, approximately, 10 per cent across the EU. Thus, this would seem to suggest that the wage increases under social partnership have been modest enough to boost Ireland’s international competitiveness

The Changing Workplace. ESRI Research Bulletin 2011/1/3

How are Irish workplaces changing? Recent reports† give a detailed picture, based on two nationally representative surveys – one of employers and another of employees – carried out in 2009. These surveys replicate many aspects of the first national workplace surveys, carried out in 2003 in the midst of an economic boom. The new surveys took place in dramatically changed economic circumstances. In the private sector, the economic crisis threatened the very survival of many firms. In the public sector, budget cuts and recruitment constraints created severe challenges in delivering public services

Literacy, Numeracy and Activation among the Unemployed. RESEARCH SERIES NUMBER 25 June 2012

It is well established in research that people with weak literacy and numeracy skills are more likely to be unemployed. Therefore, it should follow that this issue is an important consideration in labour market policy and more particularly activation policy. However, the National Adult Literacy Agency (NALA) is of the view that this has not always been the case and is concerned that unemployed adults with literacy and numeracy needs, and those with low educational attainment, are not being adequately prioritised for labour market activation. This research puts forward an argument for this to be changed

Annual Monitoring Report on Integration 2010

Welcome to the first Annual Monitoring Report on Integration which aims to provide a comprehensive and concise picture of the state of Integration in Ireland and to identify where in employment, education, social inclusion and active citizenship Ireland can increase the potential for integration

Annual Monitoring Report on Integration 2011

This is the second in a series of Annual Integration Monitors which seek to measure migrant integration in four life domains – employment, education, social inclusion and active citizenship. The core indicators closely follow those proposed in the Zaragoza Declaration. The aim is to have indicators that are comparable across EU Member States, based on existing data and focused on outcomes. The indicators are derived from the latest available large-scale survey data in Ireland that allow us to compare outcomes for Irish and migrant populations in each domain. This report also contains a special theme: immigrant children in Irish schools, which is based on original analysis of data from the Growing Up in Ireland study