Last week, the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment (DETE) released its annual statistics for employment permits in 2023, breaking down data by nationality, employer, county and sector. Reflecting on permit trends for 2023 can help us to both understand Ireland labour market in the year just gone, and to predict trends and requirements for 2024. Overall in 2023, 30,981 Employment Permits were issued by the State.
Breaking down permits granted first by nationality, there was a huge spread with permits granted to nationals from 136 different countries. The most permits were granted to Indians (11893), Filipinos (2634), Brazilians (2632), and Pakistanis (1533). Chinese (1488 permits issued), South Africans (1346 permits issued), Americans (1020 permits issued) and Nigerians (1005 permits issued) also represented a large percentage of the permits granted for the year. Ranking the highest in terms of number of granted permits, Indian nationals were granted 38.39% of all permits granted in Ireland in 2023.
Perhaps the most interesting and revealing data about the Irish labour market is the breakdown of permits granted by sector. As expected, the most permits were granted in the Health & Social Work category, with 10,037 permits granted. This represents one third of all permits granted for 2023. The second highest sector was unsurprisingly the Information & Communications sector, with 5,009 permits granted. Accommodation & Food Services and Financial & Insurance followed in third and fourth place.
Geographically, the number of permits granted was highly concentrated in Dublin (accounting for 50% of all permits issued), with Cork and Kildare following far behind in second and third place with 2613 and 1734 permits granted respectively. The county with the lowest number of permits granted was Leitrim, at just 54 in the entire year.
DETE also published data on the employers for which permit holders and applicants were working. Over 6700 different companies were named as employers on employment permit applications for 2023, with hospitals and tech companies applying for the most permits.
Overall, the data shows that the granting of permits was evenly distributed by month throughout the year, with slight peaks in June, July and November 2023. Unfortunately, the available data is not cross referenced across each category so more detailed statistics are not available at this time, nor does the data break down the type of permits granted in each case.
The prevalence of permits granted to hospital employers demonstrates the reliance of the Irish labour market on non-EU healthcare staff and workers. VisaWork is experienced in bringing many healthcare workers of various nationalities into Ireland on employment permits for large clients. The remainder of the data paints a picture of skills shortages in healthcare, tech and hospitality, with permit workers concentrated in Dublin. 2023’s trends demonstrate that non-EU workers are becoming increasingly important in Ireland to keep essential sectors adequately staffed.
The 2023 data on permit can be found at this link – https://enterprise.gov.ie/en/publications/employment-permit-statistics-2023.html
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