There is a largely unreported good news jobs story happening at the moment in Ireland. Now that private sector employers have significantly reduced their costs, we are becoming competitive again and creating new employment.
In the recruitment agency business, we are seeing a significant increase in the availability of permanent jobs – we are interpreting this as a sign of confidence returning to the real economy – where put simply, people will purchase the product if the price is right, a fact particularly evidenced by the current performance of our export sector.
While our improved competitiveness is creating several new jobs, many of these positions are being created at the lower paid level. We are encountering difficulty in filling some of these lower paid roles, because we find ourselves continually competing with the welfare system – employees are de-incentivised against taking lower paid roles, because they will lose their welfare benefits such as free medical care, rent allowance and so on…
The greatest competition for employees at present is paradoxically coming from the Irish government – we are losing a whole generation of fantastic talent to idleness through the generosity of the welfare system. Work is the lifeblood of a young person and opting out of the jobs market at such a young age is a recipe for social disaster and future regression of the workforce !