Nearly one in four Irish businesses have either paused or cancelled planned recruitment as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a survey that reveals the havoc wreaked on the financial world by the virus.
The Central Statistics Office published the second wave of its Business Impact of Covid-19 Survey on Monday. It covers the period April 20th to May 3rd. It follows the first wave of the survey, which covered the period March 16th to April 19th.
The online questionnaire was sent to a sample of 3,000 businesses and the response rate was 24.5 per cent.
The latest wave shows a third of businesses (33.1 per cent) let staff go temporarily, while 5.9 per cent let staff go permanently.
Similarly to the first wave, nearly one in four (23.9 per cent) enterprises had ceased trading either temporarily or permanently. Almost a quarter (23 per cent) closed temporarily while 0.9 per cent closed permanently.
Ceased trading
Among those who responded to both waves of the survey, one in six who had ceased trading temporarily by April 19th indicated they had recommenced trading by May 3rd.
Two of every three (66.7 per cent) businesses in the construction sector had ceased trading either temporarily or permanently. This figure was down from 70 per cent in the first wave.
Enterprises that had ceased trading in the services sector were also largely unchanged between the two periods at just over one in five.
There were large differences within the services sector where 69.1 per cent of enterprises in accommodation and food services ceased trading, either temporarily or permanently.
This compared to just 8.7 per cent of enterprises in information and communications that closed their doors.
In contrast, the industrial sector had the lowest proportion of enterprises that ceased trading, either temporarily or permanently, at 14.5 per cent. This was down from 17.7 per cent in the first wave.
Seven in 10 enterprises had lower turnover due to Covid-19 in the two-week period following April 20th, which was largely unchanged.
All companies that responded in the accommodation and food sector and 90 per cent of those in the construction sector replied that their turnover was lower than normal.
Exports decreased for 53.8 per cent of enterprises, which was down from 54.6 per cent, while imports decreased for half of companies, which represented an increase on the 46.9 per cent in the first wave.
Decreased working hours were reported by 36.7 per cent of enterprises, which was up from 32 per cent, while just 5.2 per cent of respondents had increased staff working hours, up from 4.6 per cent.
Working arrangements
Over half (53.2 per cent) of enterprises had implemented working arrangements to facilitate social distancing in the workplace at some point during the Covid-19 crisis. This rose to 77.4 per cent of enterprises in the manufacturing sector.
Almost a quarter (24.6 per cent) of enterprises had reduced their business operating hours.
Almost 70 per cent of businesses implemented remote working in some capacity. For large enterprises this figure rose to 93.8 per cent. These figures were up marginally on the first wave.
A little less than a third (30.5 per cent) of enterprises had the majority of their workforce working remotely. This figure increased to 38 per cent for large businesses. These figures were also up slightly compared to the first wave.
Over two-thirds (68.1 per cent) of enterprises indicated no change in their ability to access finance. This was up about 3 per cent compared with the first wave.
Almost half of enterprises expressed confidence in having financial resources to continue operating for longer than six months. This was 65.1 per cent for large enterprises and 45.6 per cent for SMEs.
Just over half (51.4 per cent) of enterprises said they have availed of Government support during the crisis, which was up from 48.4 per cent. This was slightly higher for SMEs (53.2 per cent) compared to large enterprises (43.4 per cent).
