The CSO found that ICT workers are among the highest paid and most educated in Ireland – but a gender gap remains.
Less than one-third (32pc) of Ireland’s ICT workers are women, according to new data published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
This figure falls to just 5pc for women employed as telecoms engineers within the ICT sector.
The CSO carried out an analysis on Ireland’s ICT workers based on how they contributed to the economy in 2019. It found that these workers are among the most highly paid and most educated in the country, but there is still a gap in terms of the number of women in the sector.
Michael Connolly, senior statistician at the CSO, said that the “cross-cutting analysis of the ICT sector” drew on areas across the CSO such as census, business, labour market and macroeconomic data to allow an in-depth review of the ICT value chain in Ireland to be produced.
It found that ICT workers had the highest average annual earnings in the country. They received €8.5bn in wages in 2019 – €2bn of which was from domestic firms.
Approximately 63pc of the ICT workforce in 2019 had a third-level qualification or higher. This was among the highest in the overall economy.
Almost half of these highly educated workers were employed by Irish companies.
While large foreign multinationals dominated the market where GDP was concerned, domestic companies were found to be active in the export market, with almost half of their IT production being exported (€1.9bn).
Connolly said that the analysis showed large foreign-owned multinationals were “10 times more productive than the small and medium-sized Irish firms”. This resulted in a productivity profile for domestic companies that is “more comparable with European norms”.
He added that large foreign multinational ICT companies paid almost €4bn in taxes in 2019 before their profits flowed out to their owners.
There was also some “spill over” of expertise with domestic firms. The analysis showed that around 20pc of people who changed jobs in the ICT sector went “between the foreign multinationals and domestic enterprises.”
“While large foreign multinationals dominate the job market, domestic companies employed almost half (40,746) of those 90,766 employed in the sector.”
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