Monitoring Northern Ireland's Workforce 2022 - 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 three 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 report 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).
This, the 33rd Annual Monitoring Report, presents an aggregated summary of the 3,807 valid monitoring returns received during 2022 from 105 public authorities and 3,702 private sector concerns. These returns were mostly received between 1st January and 31st December 2022.
This year’s report shows, for the first time since monitoring began, the share of the total monitored workforce from members of the Roman Catholic community was [50.1%] and was greater than from members of the Protestant community [49.9%].
Key findings
Employment Stocks:
In 2022, for the first time since monitoring began the share of the total monitored workforce from members of the Roman Catholic community [50.1%] was greater than the share of members from the Protestant community [49.9%].
In 2022, the Roman Catholic community composition of the monitored workforce was 3.6 pp lower than the broad approximation of Roman Catholics available for work. This represents an increase of 2.5 pp from 2021 when it was 1.1 pp lower. The Roman Catholic community composition of the monitored workforce has ceased to approximate estimates of those available for work as taken from the Labour Force Survey.
Employment Flows
For the fourteenth consecutive year, the Roman Catholic community [52.3%] comprised a greater proportion of applicants than the Protestant community [47.7%].
In every year since 2006, members of the Roman Catholic community [52.5%] comprised a greater proportion of appointees than did the Protestant community [47.5%]. In 2022, the Roman Catholic community share decreased by 0.2 percentage points from the previous year. Overall, their share has increased by [7.7 pp] from [44.8%] in 2001.
In 2022, the Roman Catholic community [51.9%] comprised a greater proportion of leavers than did the Protestant community [48.2%]. Overall, the Protestant community share of leavers has decreased by [7.7 pp] from [55.8%] in 2001.
Standard Occupational Classification tables tables and charts for each of the sections are available upon request by emailing Leanne Brown at lbrown@equalityni.org