ESRI study says it is harder to find work from jobless households

People in jobless households are less likely to get back into employment as the economy recovers, according to a new study published by the Economic and Social Research Institute today. Household joblessness, the situation created when no adult in a household is in employment, is strongly associated with long-term welfare dependency and poverty.

The ESRI study found that the chance of someone in a jobless household getting employment was little more than half that of someone in a working household.

In 2014, 14 per cent of adults and 16 per cent of children lived in jobless households, down from peaks of 16 per cent and 20 per cent respectively in 2011/-2012. The averages for the EUin 2014 were 11 per cent for both adults and children.For Irish jobless households, the rate of “joblessness exits” between one calendar quarter and the next, was just more than 10 per cent during the boom, fell to 7.5 per cent during 2008 and 2009, and rose to 8 to 10 per cent from mid-2013.

The study is based on the examination of the Quarterly National Household Survey figures for 2004 to 2014. Given overall trends for employment, it is likely that the figure for jobless households has continued to decrease over the past year. However, given that the chances of someone in a jobless household entering the labour market was only 0.59 times the equivalent for a person in a household where someone else was working, it also follows that the rate for jobless households is falling more slowly than joblessness generally.

The study found that married men, younger adults, those with higher levels of education, those living in Dublin and those who had worked in the past year were more likely to enter employment from jobless households. Conversely, the transition into employment was slower for married women, older adults, those with lower education, and residents of the Border midlands and southeast regions.

The authors of the report concluded that in order to ensure that household joblessness continues to fall in line with unemployment, labour market policy should be broadened to include people on home duties and with a disability. They also said childcare and welfare incentives were important in reducing household joblessness where children were present.

Transitions into and out of Household Joblessness, by Dorothy Watson, Bertrand Maître and Helen Russell, is published jointly by the Economic and Social Research Institute and the Department of Social Protection.