A table in relation to job creation claims in Ireland by Constantin Gurdgiev
Further to the recent claims from a junior minister that the Fine Gael/Labour coalition have been creating more than 1,000 jobs a week…
Adjunct assistant professor of finance at Trinity College Dublin, Constantin Gurdgiev writes on his True Economics blog:
There is a simple matter of arithmetic.
Recall that the current Government came into power at the end of 1Q 2011. Let us suppose the Government really got down to ‘creating jobs’ by 1Q 2012. Which means the Government has been at its jobs game for roughly 14-15 quarters through 3Q 2015 or, at the lower end 3 years and a half.
That means that the Government should have created “over” 182,000 jobs in that period. This benign to the Minister claim, because if we are to look at the record of the entire duration of the Government, his claim would have equated to roughly 221,000 jobs created.
… Keep the two numbers in your mind: we are told that the Government has ‘created’ either more than 182,000 or more than 221,000 jobs over its tenure, depending on where one starts to count.
Now, consult CSO QNHS database – the source of official counts for numbers in employment.
Between the end of 1Q 2012 and 3Q 2015 (the latest for which we have data), total employment rose 158,000. But wait, these are not all jobs. 4,500 of that increase is in the category of Assisting Relative. And 121,200 of these additions are employees, including schemes. Beyond this, the above increase also includes 30,100 new (added) self-employed with no employees.
It is hard to assume that the Government can claim it ‘created’ self-employment jobs where there is not enough activity to hire staff, or that it increased the need to help relatives.
Numbers speak for themselves. By the very best metric, Government is more than 1/2 year shy of the lowest end of the claim of ‘more than 1,000 jobs created per week’. It is more than 1/2 year shy of the claim that there were ‘1,000 jobs created per week’.
‘More than 1,000 jobs per week’ Government Claims v Reality (True Economics)
