The public sector has been hit hard in the last year and the impact of the latest budgetary cut is now being realised across the country. The pain will be a lot more acute in some areas than others. The latest round of salary cuts are as follows:
• Public sector pay cut of 5 per cent on first €30,000 salary, 7.5 per cent on the following €40,000 of salary and 10 per cent on next €55,000
• Permanent pay reduction of 15 per cent for public sector workers in higher pay bands earning more than €200,000; 12 per cent for €165,000 to €200,000; 8 per cent for those on €125,000 to €165,000
Nearly 420,000* of those at work in ‘06 were employed within the public sector (21.75%). Levels of public sector employment varied throughout the country with many rural and peripheral counties, particularly in the north-west, having a much higher rate than the national average. Counties Sligo (29%), Leitrim (26%) and Donegal (26%) had the highest rates with Limerick City (19%) and Carlow (19.5%) the lowest. The rate within Dublin (4 administrative counties) was above the national average at 22%.
The highest pay reductions are due to slice into the salaries of those at the top end of the public sector, the severity of the cuts are less for employees further down the pay scale . Over 7% of the public sector were classed as ‘employers and managers’** in the 2006 Census with a further 9.4% classed as ‘higher professionals’. The spatial distribution of this group of higher earners is very much skewed to the Dublin commuter belt in the east of the country with additional pockets outside our other major cities. The ‘lower professional’ group make up 37.5%, ‘non-manual and manual skilled’ are 31% and the ‘semi-killed and unskilled’ make up an additional 13.69%.
Regardless of a public sector employees existing level of salary/socio-economic group, this budget will hurt. Certain cohorts could find themselves in real financial difficulty in the coming months – for example: parents (reductions in child benefit) who are owner occupiers of a new property with heavy mortgages (probably approved on a higher level of income than they are now receiving) and who also commute to work by car (prices have already gone up by 5c per litre) will certainly feel the full effects of the governments cost reducing measures.
Tough times ahead for the public sector worker. Taking one for the team is difficult, let’s hope there arent too many casualties. Still, steady employment is a rare thing at the moment.
Justin Gleeson
* Census 2006 Volume 7 Principal Economic Status and Industries
** Data from Socio-Economic Group (SEG) in 2006 CSO PoWCAR
Ireland after NAMA 
December 14, 2009 at 9:51 am
Justin, it would be really useful if you were also to show the distribution of public sector employees by gender.
Because the proportion of female employees in the public sector is so high (63% compared to 36% in the private sector, if memory serves me correctly), we have to consider how spatial differences intersect with gender differences in order to think about the implications of the cuts at the level of households – which is, of course, what matters to people.
I suspect the high level of public sector employment in areas like the north-west may have served to disguise comparatively poor employment prospects for men, even during the Celtic Tiger period.
Public sector employees are not just much more likely to be female, they are also comparatively young. So the consequences for younger families, and ultimately for children – of depending on a female income, of living in the commuter belt because that was the only place they could afford to buy a home, etc. – may be very severe. Add that to the cuts to public welfare recipients, and we begin to get a picture of how the politics of the crisis may affect the prospects for families, children and gender equality in the long run.
December 31, 2009 at 10:48 am
[…] across the state at local and regional scales (for example, with respect to the live register, public sector pay, house prices and office rents, residential vacancy rates, cross-border shopping, County […]
January 7, 2010 at 2:54 pm
The contours of the public/private landscape in the North West were detailed to some extent in a recent report from the Western Development Commission: with the catchy title of ‘Travel to work and labour catchments in the Western Region’.
For example, in Sligo Borough (ie the town) 57% of the workforce is female; this contrasts with 58% male outside the borough (ie in rural areas).
This pattern is replicated across the most of the Western counties: the major towns are public sector and services dominated, with largely female, younger and better-educated workforces; workers in the rural areas are more likely to male, older and less-educated.
Unfortunately the data in the report is at the individual level, rather than the household, so it is not possible to see how these labour market activities play out at the household level.
Certainly areas like Sligo will get a double whammy of reduction in construction-related activity (for mainly men) and public sector contraction (mainly for women). Also the decline in income from both these sectors will have a major knock-on effect for retail and services – as can be seen in the Sligo CBD today.