The unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 65 rose to 5.3% in the third quarter of this year, up 0.8 percentage points from 4.5% in the same period of 2024. This marks the highest level since the third quarter of 2021, as Ireland was emerging from Covid.
According to the Central Statistics Office, 155,400 people aged 15–74 were unemployed, an increase of 25,900 compared to a year earlier.
The employment rate for 15 to 65-year-olds slipped to 74.7%, down from 75.3% a year ago. However, the total number of people in employment aged 15–89 rose by 30,600 (1.1%) to 2.82 million.
Youth unemployment fell to 47.5%, from 50.9% in the same quarter last year.
The CSO figures also show that more than six in ten workers—around 1.8 million—said they never worked from home. Almost one million reported working from home at least occasionally, while just over half a million said they usually worked from home more than half of the time, a drop of almost a quarter of a million from early 2021.
The estimated labour force—people aged 15–89 who were either employed or unemployed—reached 2,980,900 in the third quarter, up 1.9% on the same period in 2024. The labour force participation rate stood at 66.5%, slightly down from 66.6% last year.
Meanwhile, the total number of hours worked per week between July and September rose by 0.5 million (0.6%) to 86.5 million, compared with the same period a year earlier.