Accommodation and food services sector was the worst hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland

A new report by Ireland‘s Central Statistics Office (CSO) has found that the accommodation and food services sector was the worst impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, seeing employment fall by 38% between Q4 2019 and Q2 2020.

The administrative and support services sector was the next-most impacted, according to the findings, with a 22.3% decline in employment over the same period. However, the two main economic sectors, financial, insurance & real estate activities and information & communication, saw no decline in the numbers of people in employment during the pandemic.

“The effects of the pandemic on employment numbers were different depending on what sector you worked in,” commented Colin Hanley, Statistician in the CSO‘s labour market and earnings division.

Five years on

The CSO’s report COVID-19 – Our Lives Five Years On: Impact on Employment, Earnings, and Air Travel, noted that in Q4 2019, before the pandemic hit, Ireland had 2.4 million people in employment, but that number declined to 2.2 million in Q2 2020, at the height of the pandemic.

The rebound, however, was notable – by Q2 2021, employment levels had returned to 2.3 million, and by the final quarter of last year (Q4 2024), 2.8 million people were employed, the highest on record since 1998.

Youth employment (among those aged 15–24) saw a sharp decline of over 25% between Q4 2019 and Q2 2020, but had recovered to pre-pandemic levels by Q3 2021.

During the pandemic, almost 1.5 million people received some form of government income support, the CSO noted, such as the COVID-19 Pandemic Unemployment Payment (PUP) and Wage Subsidy Schemes (Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme and Employment Wage Subsidy Scheme).

This reached its peak in April 2020, when more than one million people were receiving some form of income support. By February 2022, and the loosening of pandemic-era restrictions, 53,804 people were still on these schemes, which were phased out in May 2022.

Impact on airports

The CSO’s study also looked at the impact of the pandemic on passenger numbers, with passengers at Ireland’s five main airports, Dublin, Cork, Shannon, Knock, and Kerry, falling by 58% in March 2020. By April 2020, passenger numbers were 99.2% lower than in April 2019.

“Restrictions on travel introduced as a result of the pandemic had a dramatic and immediate impact on passenger numbers at the country’s five main airports,” commented Damien Lenihan, statistician in the CSO’s transport division.

The recovery of the air travel sector was slow, with numbers only standing at 90% of pre-pandemic levels by August 2022, and surpassing pre-pandemic numbers in January 2023. Read more here.