Monitoring Northern Ireland's Workforce - High level trends over time
The central purpose of employer monitoring information is to allow employers (through their Article 55 reviews) to determine whether members of each community are afforded fair participation in those individual employments, however, there is also interest in considering monitoring figures at the Northern Ireland level.
The Commission’s annual ‘Fair Employment Monitoring report’ has for more than two decades aggregated monitoring information across all monitored employers in Northern Ireland, to produce composition figures (employees, applicants, appointees, promotees, leavers) at the Northern Ireland level and for key sectors.
By doing so, the Monitoring Report: Annual Summary of Monitoring Returns, 2017 (pdf, 1.5mb) seeks to inform employers and interested parties about aggregate compositional patterns that, alongside other information on local labour availability, might suggest a dynamic or pattern that might better inform their own considerations of fair participation within their own or specific employment(s).
Key findings
Employment Stocks:
- While members of the Protestant community continue to comprise the majority of the monitored workforce, the Roman Catholic community share continues to increase (by around [0.5 pp] per annum) to [48.9%] in 2017. A gradual upward trend (averaging around [0.6 pp] per annum) in the Roman Catholic share of the monitored workforce has been observed since 2001.
- In 2016, the Roman Catholic community composition of those in monitored employment ceased to approximate estimates of Roman Catholics available for work. The Roman Catholic composition of the monitored workforce was 4.9 percentage points lower than the broad approximation of Roman Catholics available for work. In 2017, the difference had reduced to 2.8 percentage points.
Employment Flows:
- For the ninth consecutive year, the Roman Catholic community [53.1%] comprised a greater proportion of applicants than the Protestant community [46.9%].
- In every year since 2006, members of the Roman Catholic community [53.0%] comprised a greater proportion of appointees than did the Protestant community [47.0%]. In 2017, the Roman Catholic community share decreased by [0.8 pp] marking a discontinuation of the overall trend of increased Roman Catholic appointees observed since 2006. Although, overall their share has increased by [9.0 pp] from [44.8%] in 2001.
- In 2017, the Roman Catholic community [51.0%] comprised a greater proportion of leavers than did the Protestant community [49.0%]. Overall, the Protestant community shares of leavers has decreased by [6.8 pp] from [55.8%] in 2001.