THE basic message of the Labour Force Survey published this week is that between April 1995 and April this year there was a further huge rise in employment: the survey shows an increase of 45,000 in the numbers at work between these two dates, of which 12,000 was an increase in male employment.
In fact the true increase in male employment was higher than this because unfortunately this year's survey coincided with the period when employment, mainly of men, was temporarily reduced by 6,000: because of the momentary impact of the BSE crisis on employment due to the brief halt in processing by renderers of offal.
If one excludes employment on state-sponsored schemes so as to get a better picture of what has been happening in the market economy.
The extraordinary dynamism of the private non-agricultural sector emerges strikingly from these data.
The survey material on that part of the adult population who are not at work poses some problems of interpretation. These figures, derived from a question as to a person's "usual situation with regard to employment", usually evoke fairly consistent responses from year to year.
However, experience in recent times has shown that when the taking of the Labour Force Survey coincides with a Census of Population, a number of women who normally select the term "engaged on home duties" to describe their situation choose instead to describe themselves in that year as being "unemployed". There were some signs of this in 1986 and it was very evident in 1991.
But on this occasion these figures are further complicated by what appears to be a more radical change in the pattern of self-description by women in response to this question. Some of the language used in the survey (viz. "home duties" rather than "working at home"), seems to have become a good deal less acceptable as a result of public debate during the past 18 months on issues related to women and employment.
Normally the number of women describing themselves by this term declines by 9-10,000 a year as more and more women enter the labour force, in many cases after completing a period of domestic child-care, and, with the gradual ageing of our population, the number of women describing themselves as "retired" also rises by an average of a thousand or so.
But between April 1995 and April 1996 the number accepting the term "home duties" as a description of their "usual situation with regard to employment" fell by no less than 47,000 (over four times the usual figure).
The sudden drop of 17,000 in the number of women recorded as not being in the labour force, which has no recent precedent, suggests that something approaching this number of women whose actual employment situation did not change during the 12 months to last April must have redefined their "usual situation" as being within the labour force.
We know that the survey's male unemployment figures were certainly artificially boosted because of the impact of the dispute referred to earlier: the real level of male unemployment must have fallen by about 11,000, or 7.5 per cent, in this 12-month period - and, given the much larger inflow of women than men into the work force, the real fall in female unemployment is unlikely to have been any less.
Thus, when these distorting factors are removed, the picture that emerges - viz. a probable decline of some 15,000 in unemployment - is much closer to the kind of figure one would expect for a period in which employment grew by over 50,000.
THE problem of tracking down the underlying trend of employment and unemployment in the face of the complex phenomena described above has been rendered much more difficult because of the fact that the provisional Labour Force Survey data sets out only the answers to the simple question "what is your usual situation with regard to employment?"
The results of the much more probing questions asked in the section of the survey designed to provide data in accordance with International Labour Office requirements will not be available for a further three months.
When they become available in January, the answers to those questions should help to clarify some of the confusion that now exists because of what seems to have been an important - and in the circumstances perhaps understandable - process of redefinition of status by a significant minority of women surveyed last April.
But whatever problems may exist in relation to year-on-year Labour Force Survey comparisons, especially in a Census year, long-term trends can readily be detected when this year's figures are compared with those for seven years ago.
Such a comparison shows that since 1989 non-agricultural private sector employment has risen by 180,000 - an increase of well over one-quarter. And despite a decline of one-sixth in the numbers at work in agriculture, the total number at work has increased by 18 per cent. This is over five times as fast as in the rest of the EU, where the overall employment increase during these seven years has been 3.3 per cent.
A very important development during this period has been a sharp drop in the ratio of dependants to workers: in 1989 for every 100 workers, there were 226 dependants - students, children, unemployed, sick, disabled, and women engaged in unremunerated work at home. Today this crucial ratio is down to 182 dependants per worker, and it is set to continue to fall.
That means that henceforward the long-term increase in our average material living standards (i.e., resources available per head) will be significantly greater than the increase in output per worker, which itself has been running at close to 3 per cent a year during this recent period.
All this emphasises the importance of seeking as rapidly as possible some kind of widespread consensus on how such a rapid growth of resources should be deployed within our society, so as to avoid an intolerable and socially-divisive increase in the gap between the well-off and the disadvantaged.
The migration estimates published simultaneously with the Labour Force Survey reveal a migration pattern in the 1990s which is radically different from that which we experienced in the 1980s.
These figures suggest that during the past five years an average annual net emigration of 12,000 young people aged 15-24 has been offset by an annual net inflow of 6,000 older people of working age, accompanied by 5,500 children - in addition to which there has been an inflow of about 1,000 retired people each year.
This means that since 1991 our birth rate has been supplemented to the tune of about one-tenth by the children of returning workers. And this inflow seems to be increasing: in the year ended last April the net inflow of people aged 25-64 is estimated to have risen to 8,300, bringing with them 6,300 children.
There seem also to have been some interesting changes in the geographical patterns of our emigration. Since 1993 only two-fifths of emigrants have gone to Britain; one-quarter have gone to the US; one-seventh to continental EU countries, and almost one-fifth to the rest of the world - many of these, I would guess, to Australia.
Broadly speaking, a continuing small net outflow to the United States and other overseas countries has been offset by a net inflow from Britain and the Continent.
It is clear from these figures that a majority of the new jobs being created here are being filled by school-leavers, returning emigrants, and women taking up work again after a period of child-caring. Less, than half of those being recruited to the work force are unemployed workers; the growth in the number of long-term unemployed reflects this recruitment pattern, which clearly puts a premium on education and current employment experience.
What of the future? Although we cannot of course expect to maintain indefinitely the annual output growth rate of 7 per cent and the related annual employment increase of 45,000 achieved during the past: three years, it would not be unreasonable to expect a 5 per cent growth rate and an annual employment increase of over 30,000. Unemployment should fall by up, to 15,000 a year and there should be little, if any, net emigration.
We must, however, expect a continuation of the recent pattern of migration flows - a proportion, perhaps 10-15 per cent, of each year's outflow from education, and especially higher education, going abroad, most of them to gain experience; this outflow being offset by an inflow of about half that number of emigrants returning, mainly from Britain or the Continent, to work in Ireland, most of them couples with children.
Within the next few years, as the outflow from the educational system starts to fall, reflecting the decline in the birth rate after 1980, the outflow of young emigrants will start to dry up, and will be outweighed by the inflow of people who, having secured experience abroad, are returning home to spend the rest of their working life in their own country.
Thus while one cannot rule out the possibility of a further small net outflow during the next five years or so, the early part of the next century should be characterised by a possibly permanent drying up of the net outflow of Irish people that has been such a marked feature of the past three centuries.