One in four workers earn less than €450 a week, while one in eight earn more than €1,500, new figures show
Almost two in every three employments in the accommodation and food services sector had weekly earnings of less than €450.
One in eight workers earn more than €1,500 a week, but one in four earn less than €450 a week, new figures have shown.
On Tuesday, the Central Statistics Office (CSO) published data on the distribution of earnings across the economy in 2023. It found women had a greater representation among the lower earnings bracket, while men were proportionally more highly represented among higher-earning workers.
“Almost one in three female employments (32.1%) had weekly earnings of less than €450, compared with almost one in five male employments (19.4%),” said CSO statistician Dr Eimear Heffernan.
“Less than one in 10 females were in this [higher-earning] cohort (8.9%), while 16.8% of males had weekly earnings of €1,500 or more.”
The figures show how much annual earnings in Ireland have increased in recent years.
From an average yearly salary of €43,830 in 2018, the average annual earnings stood at €53,995 in 2023, according to the CSO.
Men earned an average of €60,816 a year, while women earned €46,915 on average.
The CSO said five sectors recorded growth less than that of the median rise of 4.2% in 2023. These included transportation and storage, education, public administration, and defence.
On the other hand, the increase in wages for people in information and communication and professional, scientific and technical activities sectors was more than double these other sectors.
Dr Heffernan said: “Almost two in every three employments in the accommodation and food services sector had weekly earnings of less than €450 (63.2%), while more than half of employments in the arts, entertainment, recreation and other services sector had similar earnings (53.2%).
“This compares with the information and communications sector, where more than one in five employments (22.5%) had weekly earnings of €2,250 or more.”
Four out of every five workers were employed in the private sector, with three in five of these private sector workers (60.9%) earning less than €750 a week compared with fewer than three in 10 (29.3%) such workers in the public sector.
At the upper end of the distribution, however, a larger proportion of private sector workers (4.3%) had weekly earnings of €2,400 or more in 2023, compared with public sector workers (2.2%).
Breaking down by age groups, weekly earnings tended to increase with age, with the median weekly earnings at their highest among workers in the 40-49 age group.
“The lowest annual increase in median weekly earnings was recorded among the 25-29 years age group at 3.0%, from €644.04 in 2022 to €663.13 in 2023,” the CSO said.
“The proportion of total employments in this age category has been reducing steadily since 2011.”
On the other hand, wages rose the most for workers in the 50-59 age category, from a median of €767.42 in 2022 to €804.27 in 2023.
