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Ireland at Work 2027: The Workforce Outlook

Sep 16
17 min read
Ireland at Work 2027: The Workforce Outlook, a Fitvision report for HR and people leaders in Ireland

Recruiting is about to get easier. Building capability is about to get harder.


Ireland at Work 2027 is written for HR and People leaders at Irish employers with 250 or more staff. Every figure is attributed to the body that produced it, measured data is labelled separately from forecasts, and where no Irish figure exists we say so.


Published by Fitvision, Dublin. Research current to 21 August 2026.


Table of Contents


What Ireland at Work 2027 says

Five findings, each drawn from a named body and set out in full later in the report.


1. The labour market is loosening at the margin

Unemployment measured 4.9% in Q1 2026 and every published forecast puts it around 5% through 2027. Labour force growth slowed from 3.5% to 0.6% in a year.


2. The school pipeline has turned

Primary enrolments are falling and post-primary enrolments peak in the current school year. Your 2027 hiring plan is unaffected. Your graduate pipeline over the next decade is not.


3. AI is reaching office and graduate roles first

Irish research finds higher-earning and more highly educated workers at greater risk, reversing the pattern of previous technology waves. ICT and administrative roles are already the weakest performers.


4. The capability gap is a leadership gap

Employers name AI integration a strategic priority while two-thirds do not believe their own leadership team is equipped to lead on it. The same pattern runs through retention, where career progression is the leading turnover driver.


5. Wellbeing concern is rising while investment in culture falls

More than a third of organisations say employee wellbeing became harder over the past year. Reported investment in company culture moved in the opposite direction.


The short version. Recruiting gets easier through 2027. Every problem that gets harder runs through the same group of people: the managers between the strategy and the workforce. A looser labour market does not touch any of them.

How to read this report


This report contains no Fitvision forecasts. Every number below was produced by a named body, and each is labelled with what kind of number it is.


  • OBSERVED — Measured data. Something that has already happened and been counted.

  • PROJECTED — A forecast published by a named body, with a stated time horizon.

  • SCENARIO — A projection that holds only under stated assumptions. The scenario is named every time.


Three rules we applied


  • Attribution runs to the producing body. Where one publication quotes another body's forecast, we credit the body that produced it.

  • We leave gaps open. Where no named body has published a projection, we say so. Section 7 lists those gaps.

  • We flag uncertainty where the source flags it. Several sources caution against over-reading their own figures, and those cautions are reproduced here.

The most important distinction in this report. Exposure is not displacement. The widely quoted finding that 63% of Irish employment is exposed to AI measures task overlap. It describes where AI can perform some tasks. A separate figure, around 7% of current jobs, comes from different research and is a scenario-based displacement estimate. The two are not comparable. Section 3 sets out both.

Two numbers, two different things: 63% AI exposure measured, versus a 7% modelled displacement scenario


Section 1: The labour market to 2027


Ireland is at or near full employment and softening at the margin. Four bodies have published forecasts and they cluster in a narrow band around 5%.


  • 4.9% — Unemployment rate, Q1 2026. Central Statistics Office. Up from 4.3% a year earlier.

  • 2.79m — In employment, aged 15 to 89. Central Statistics Office. Up 400 over the year.

  • 0.6% — Labour force growth, year to Q1 2026. Central Statistics Office. The same figure a year earlier was 3.5%.


The Irish labour market in Q1 2026: 4.9% unemployment, 0.6% labour force growth, 400 net jobs added

What the CSO measured (OBSERVED)

The Central Statistics Office publishes the Labour Force Survey quarterly. The Q1 2026 release, published 21 May 2026, is the authoritative actual for anyone planning 2027.


Measure

Value

Detail

Employment, aged 15 to 89

2,794,500

Up 400 over the year

Unemployment rate, ILO basis

4.9%

141,800 people, up from 4.3%

Labour force

2,936,300

Up 18,000, against 98,900 a year earlier

Participation rate

65.0%

Down from 65.8%

Employment rate, 15 to 64

73.3%

Male 77.3%, female 69.3%

Youth unemployment, 15 to 24

10.2%

Up 0.7 percentage points

Long-term unemployment rate

1.4%

41,300 people, up from 0.9%

Source: Central Statistics Office, Labour Force Survey Quarter 1 2026, published 21 May 2026. This is the employment figure used throughout this report. Where other sources in later sections quote a different total, they are reporting a different period.


The number that moved. Headline employment barely changed. Underneath it, the Central Bank of Ireland notes that employment fell in 8 of the 14 sectors in Q1 2026. The two largest falls were administrative activities at 10.7% and ICT at 10.6%. Those are the same two categories the AI displacement research identifies in Section 3. Net employment stability also masks a gender divergence. Male employment rose 17,100 over the year while female employment fell 16,800.

What four bodies forecast (PROJECTED)


Unemployment rate forecasts for 2026 and 2027 from four Irish bodies, working planning band 4.7% to 5.2%

Body

2026 forecast

2027 forecast

Department of Finance

4.7%

4.8%

Bank of Ireland

4.8%

Not published in this release

ESRI

4.9%

5.0%

Central Bank of Ireland

5.1%

5.2%

Sources: Department of Finance, Annual Progress Report 2026. Bank of Ireland Economic Research Unit, Ireland Outlook, April 2026. ESRI, Quarterly Economic Commentary, Summer 2026. Central Bank of Ireland, Quarterly Bulletin 2026:2, 18 June 2026.


On employment levels, the ESRI forecasts 2,842,000 in 2026 and 2,889,000 in 2027. The Central Bank forecasts 2,852,000 and 2,908,000, holding unemployment at 5.2% again in 2028. The Department of Finance projects employment growth of 1.6% in 2026 and 1.4% in 2027.


The working planning band is 4.7% to 5.2%, sitting around 5%. That represents a modest loosening from the 2024 low of 4.3%.


Forecast vintage matters. The ESRI's own nowcast moved from 4.6% in its Spring 2026 commentary to 4.9% in Summer 2026, so always check which vintage a figure comes from. Note the spread as well: the Department of Finance and the Central Bank sit 0.4 percentage points apart on both years.

On pay, the Central Bank forecasts compensation per employee growth of 4% in 2026, 4.1% in 2027 and 3.7% in 2028 as conditions ease. It attributes the downward pressure to a slowdown in job postings alongside redundancy announcements in the higher-paying ICT sector. Job postings were down 8.9% year on year in May 2026, below the pre-pandemic level.


Section 2: Population, ageing and the pipeline


The demographic story runs on a longer clock than any hiring plan. It is also the most settled evidence in this report.


School enrolments have turned (SCENARIO)


The Department of Education and Youth published national enrolment projections in December 2025, covering 2025/26 to 2044/45. The Department states that the M1F2 scenario is the most likely outcome. M1F2 assumes high rates of migration continue and that fertility falls gradually from 1.55 to 1.3 by 2038.


Source: Department of Education and Youth, National Projections of full-time enrolment, Primary and Post-Primary Level, 2025/26 to 2044/45, December 2025. M1F2 scenario, described by the Department as the most likely outcome.


The Department's own caution. The Department describes these as projections rather than predictions, and notes that enrolment at local level may not align with national trends. Residential development and inward migration can create pressure in some areas while others decline.

The numbers behind the lines (SCENARIO)


Measure

M1F2 (most likely)

Detail

Primary enrolments, Sept 2024

552,059

Down 4,047 on the prior year. Peak was 567,772 in 2018/19.

Average annual primary fall, 2024/25 to 2034/35

Around 5,800

Around 6,300 under M2F2 and 7,200 under M3F2.

Net primary decrease over that period

57,700 to 71,800

Range across the three migration scenarios.

Post-primary peak

429,350

Reached in 2025/26. Falls from 2026/27 under all three scenarios.

Average annual post-primary fall, 2026/27 to 2035/36

Around 4,300

Around 5,200 under M2F2 and 6,550 under M3F2.

First-year entries by 2044/45

59,681

Down from the 2024/25 peak of 73,237.


CSO population and labour force projections (SCENARIO)


The CSO's current round, published 16 July 2024 and based on Census 2022, uses three migration variants, with fertility and mortality held constant. All start from net inward migration of 75,000 in 2022. M1 high tapers to 45,000 a year by 2027, M2 moderate to 30,000 by 2032, and M3 low to 10,000 by 2032. Each is then held to 2057.


  • Under M1, the labour force grows by just over 610,000, or 22.6%, to 3,307,000 by 2037. That is an annual average increase of around 40,700, or 1.5% a year. Rising participation among people aged 60 and over is a stated driver.


  • The population aged 65 and over passes one million by 2030 across all scenarios, and its share of the total rises from 15.1% in 2022 to between 27.8% under M1 and 31.6% under M3 by 2057.


Source: Central Statistics Office, Population and Labour Force Projections 2023 to 2057.


The dependency ratio (SCENARIO)


The CSO Older Persons Information Hub, using the M2 moderate migration scenario, projects the old-age dependency ratio rising from 25% in 2027 to 49.8% in 2057. That is a move from roughly four working-age people per person aged 65 and over, toward roughly two. The population aged 85 and over rises from an estimated 104,300 in 2027 to 389,400 in 2057.

This shift has already begun (OBSERVED). CSO data shows employment among people aged 65 and over rose 26%, from 103,900 in Q2 2021 to 131,400 in Q2 2025. Phased retirement and older-worker retention are live design questions now, not in 2040.

Section 3: AI exposure and displacement


Three separate bodies of evidence exist and they answer different questions. Used together they are useful. Used interchangeably they mislead.


1. Exposure: how much task overlap exists (OBSERVED)


The Department of Finance and the Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment published Artificial Intelligence: Friend or Foe? in June 2024, using IMF and academic exposure measures on Census 2022 data.


  • 63% of employment sits in occupations exposed to AI. Against a 60% advanced-economy average.

  • 33% in occupations where AI is likely to complement labour, boosting productivity alongside the worker.

  • 30% in occupations at risk of substitution by AI. A measure of risk. It forecasts no specific job losses.


Source: Department of Finance and Department of Enterprise, Trade and Employment, June 2024.


  • Financial and insurance activities and information and communication are the most exposed sectors. The Expert Group on Future Skills Needs adds that 94% of information and communication workers are in highly exposed occupations, mostly in low complementarity roles.

  • Women are more exposed than men, reflecting higher female representation in exposed administrative and customer-facing roles.

  • Exposure measures exclude robot technologies, so manual and physical roles sit outside the frame.


2. Displacement: a modelled scenario (SCENARIO)


The ESRI and the Department of Finance published Artificial Intelligence and income inequality in Ireland on 9 April 2026, using the ESRI SWITCH microsimulation model with international evidence.


Central scenario. Around 7% of current jobs, roughly 200,000, could be displaced in the short to medium run. This figure is drawn from credible international estimates and is one scenario among several the researchers examine.


The distributional finding. This reverses the pattern of previous technology waves. The research finds AI places higher-earning and more highly educated workers at greater risk. The largest average disposable income losses fall on middle and higher-income households. Clerical roles are the most exposed group. Income inequality, measured by the Gini index, rises moderately in every scenario examined.

Source: ESRI and Department of Finance, Joint Research Series 16, 9 April 2026.


3. Early empirical signals (OBSERVED)


The Department of Finance published AI and the Irish Labour Market: Assessing Emerging Impacts in February 2026. It groups sectors rather than occupations into high, medium and low exposure. The highest-exposure group includes ICT and financial services.


Exposure category

Employment growth, 2023 to 2025

High exposure

4.0%

Medium exposure

4.5%

Low exposure

6.25%

Source: Department of Finance, AI and the Irish Labour Market: Assessing Emerging Impacts, February 2026.


The age split is sharper still. Employment among 15 to 29 year olds in the highest-exposure sectors fell 1%, even as those sectors grew overall. In ICT specifically it fell by over 20%, while prime-age workers aged 30 to 59 grew 12%.


Why this holds up. In lower-exposure sectors the pattern reverses. Younger-worker growth outpaced older workers over the same period, which rules out a general downturn in youth employment as the explanation.
The Department's own caution. The Department noted it may be premature to attribute these changes solely to AI-driven substitution. Treat as an early signal worth monitoring.
What to take from Section 3. The exposure measure tells you where AI can perform some tasks. The displacement scenario tells you what one credible model produces under stated assumptions. The empirical signals tell you what has actually happened in the last two years. All three point at the same place: office, clerical, ICT and financial roles, and at younger workers within them.
What none of them tells you is whether your organisation is ready to respond. That question is answered in Section 5, and the answer is uncomfortable.

Section 4: Skills shortages


A looser recruitment market leaves these untouched. Shortage is concentrated at the high-qualification end, which is where the AI displacement research also points.


81% of net employment growth from Q4 2019 to Q4 2024 went to people holding NFQ level 8 or above.


The latest National Skills Bulletin is the 2025 edition, the twenty-first, reporting on 2024 data. No 2026 edition had been published at the time of research.


Occupations in shortage (OBSERVED)


Shortages appear in science and engineering, ICT, health and social care, education, construction, other craft, hospitality, and transport and logistics.


  • Construction. Shortage in civil engineers, construction project managers, quantity surveyors and carpenters. Potential future shortage in plumbers.

  • Science and engineering. Shortage of scientists in analytical, process and medical disciplines, engineers across QC and QA, process, design, mechanical, electrical and automation, and technicians in manufacturing, maintenance and lab settings. SOLAS notes particular demand for AI skills.

  • Cross-cutting. Persistent demand for communication, teamwork and leadership skills alongside digital, data-analysis and sustainability skills.

  • Green skills. SOLAS published a Green Skills 2030 Implementation Plan in 2025, and the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs published Skills for Zero Carbon covering renewable energy, retrofit and electric vehicle skills to 2030. No named body has published a headcount projection for green roles in Ireland.


Source: SOLAS, National Skills Bulletin 2025, 21st edition, reporting on 2024 annual data.


Note the third item. The skills SOLAS lists as persistently in demand across every sector are communication, teamwork and leadership, alongside the technical ones. Those are not recruited. They are built.


The digital skills position


ICT specialists account for 6.3% of employment, around 173,400 people, the fifth highest share in the EU against a 5.0% average, and up more than 50% since the pandemic. The EU Digital Decade target is 10% by 2030. 73% of people have basic or above digital skills against an EU average of 56%, and SME generative AI usage reached 33%, third highest of seven countries in an OECD survey.


Source: Expert Group on Future Skills Needs (2023 and 2024 data).


A widely quoted figure that needs correcting


The 17,000 cyber jobs by 2030 figure is a superseded scenario. It is still in circulation, and it should not be planned against.


It comes from Cyber Ireland's Cyber Labour Market Report, which modelled a 10% compound annual growth scenario from a 2021 baseline of 7,351 people, reaching 17,333 roles by 2030.


Cyber Ireland's own 2025 research puts employment growth in Ireland at around 4% a year between 2022 and 2024, and states directly that this falls below the 10% per annum scenarios set out in the baseline study. It now expects growth of up to 5% a year.


Cyber security employment in Ireland: actual 7,911 in 2024 against the 17,333 by 2030 modelled scenario

Three years into the scenario, actual employment sits roughly 1,900 below the modelled path: 7,911 against a modelled trajectory from a 7,351 baseline in 2021.


Sources: Cyber Ireland, Cyber Labour Market Report, Table 7.1 (10% CAGR scenario). Cyber Ireland, NI Cyber and Perspective Economics, All-Island Cyber Security Sector Research Report 2025. The 7,911 figure is Ireland-only. The same report gives 10,659 across the island, and the two should not be used interchangeably.


The shortage remains real. Survey respondents flagged the need to resource the talent pipeline before reaching full utilisation, with demand for engineering, security analyst and governance, risk and compliance skills. What has changed is the scale of the gap, and any board paper still quoting 17,000 is quoting a scenario its own author has moved away from.


Section 5: Capability, retention and wellbeing


Sections 1 to 4 describe what is happening to the Irish labour market. This section describes what is happening inside Irish organisations, and it is the part of the evidence base that employers can actually act on.


The readiness gap (OBSERVED)

Two Irish employers in three do not believe their leadership team is equipped to lead on AI

CIPD Ireland surveys Irish employers directly. Two of its findings sit directly against each other.


  • 73% name AI integration as a strategic priority.

  • Two-thirds do not believe their leadership team is equipped to lead on it.

  • 6% have fully embedded AI in the organisation.


CIPD Ireland, 2026 data. 135 respondents, directional.


For context, the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs recorded 15% of Irish enterprises using AI in 2024, double the 8% recorded in 2023.


Read those three numbers together. The gap between stated priority and actual readiness is the practical story for most HR functions in 2027. It is not a technology gap. Almost every organisation naming AI a priority has access to the same tools. What two-thirds of them say they lack is a leadership team able to lead the change.

Sources: CIPD Ireland, HR Practices in Ireland and CIPD-IRN Private Sector Pay and Employment 2026 (data collected January 2026, 135 respondents, so treat as directional). Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, Skills Insights Note 2025-2.


Retention and turnover (OBSERVED)


Why people leave: career progression 71% versus financial pressures 41% as reported turnover drivers

Measure

Value

Report difficulty retaining talent

80%

Organisations where turnover increased

One third

Turnover driver: career progression

71%

Turnover driver: financial pressures

41%

Strategic priority: addressing skills shortages

67%

Employees wanting to work outside Ireland

27%

Investment in company culture

62%

Source: CIPD Ireland, HR Practices in Ireland 2025-2026.


What the retention numbers are actually saying

Career progression leads financial pressures as a turnover driver by thirty percentage points. That is a finding about management practice rather than pay policy. Progression is decided, communicated and delivered by line managers, in conversations that happen or fail to happen long before an exit interview.


CIPD flags cost-of-living and housing pressures as increasingly binding constraints on recruitment and retention, so the financial dimension is real. But an employer that responds to 80% retention difficulty with pay alone is answering the smaller of the two drivers.


Two figures that appear to have moved. Employees wanting to work outside Ireland reads as 40% in the 2024 material and 27% in the 2026 material. Investment in company culture reads as 74% and then 62% over the same period. Both look like meaningful shifts. We have not been able to confirm that the question wording and sample base are identical across the two survey editions, so we present them as reported figures rather than as verified trends. Anyone putting either into a board paper should confirm the comparison with CIPD first.

Wellbeing (OBSERVED)

Wellbeing concern among Irish employers: 25% mental health, 29% burnout, 36% say wellbeing got harder

In the same CIPD research:


  • 25% of organisations name mental health challenges a leading cause of absenteeism.

  • 29% say burnout is a significant concern.

  • 36% say employee wellbeing became more challenging over the past year.


Set that against the culture investment figure above. On the reported numbers, concern about wellbeing rose while investment in culture fell. If the comparison holds, it describes an environment where the problem is growing and the response is shrinking.


What to take from Section 5. Three separate findings point the same way. Employers name AI a priority but say their leaders are not ready for it. Employers report severe retention difficulty and name progression, a management practice, as the leading cause. Employers report rising wellbeing concern alongside falling investment in culture.
None of those is a recruitment problem, and a looser labour market does not touch any of them.

Section 6: Planning implications


Three things to do before the next planning cycle: anchor the baseline, separate exposure from displacement, treat retention as a management question

Four moves, each with a trigger to revisit it. None require a forecast beyond what the named bodies have published.


1. Anchor the baseline, then hold it

Use the CSO Labour Force Survey Q1 2026 as your authoritative actual: 2.79 million employed, 4.9% unemployment, 65.0% participation. Use the ESRI Summer 2026 commentary and the Central Bank's June 2026 Bulletin as your forward vintages. Treat 4.7% to 5.2% as the planning band, noting the Central Bank sits at the top of that range.


Trigger to revise: if the next quarterly CSO release prints unemployment above 5.3%, that exceeds every published forecast. Treat the softening as confirmed and re-plan hiring downward.


2. Separate exposure from displacement, then ask who runs the conversation

Report the 63% exposure figure and the 7% central-scenario displacement figure as two different things, naming the source each time. Neither is a headcount instruction, and neither divides evenly across an organisation. The evidence concentrates the risk in clerical, ICT and financial roles, and among younger workers within them.


The more useful question is who will have the conversations that follow. Reskilling is not delivered by a strategy document. It is delivered by line managers telling individual people that their role is changing, and helping them see where they go next. That is the same leadership capability two-thirds of employers say they do not have.


Trigger to act early: if your own function is clerical, administrative or financial-services heavy, start with the managers rather than the curriculum. A reskilling programme run by managers who cannot hold the conversation will report attendance and change nothing.


3. Treat retention as a management question before a pay question

With 80% of employers reporting retention difficulty and career progression the leading driver at 71%, against financial pressures at 41%, the larger driver is the one shaped by everyday management practice. Progression is experienced as a series of conversations about what someone is good at, what they want next, and what would get them there. Where those conversations are not happening, no pay adjustment substitutes for them.


The demographic picture reinforces this. With the 65 and over population passing one million by 2030 and the dependency ratio moving from 25% in 2027 toward roughly 50% by 2057, phased retirement and older-worker retention become live design questions rather than edge cases, and both sit with managers.


Trigger: if voluntary turnover exceeds the CIPD modal band of 10% to 19%, audit progression conversations and job design before increasing pay.


4. Where you cannot buy the skill, retention is the strategy

Cyber, construction and green skills all carry demand that runs independently of the macro cycle, and SOLAS reports that 81% of recent net employment growth went to people at NFQ level 8 or above. Assume competition for these skills intensifies whatever the unemployment rate does.


That has a direct consequence. For roles you cannot reliably recruit, keeping the people who already do them is not a fallback position, it is the plan. Which returns the question to the same place as moves 2 and 3: the manager those people report to, and whether that person is equipped and supported.


Trigger: none. This one holds regardless of the cycle, which is the point.


The through-line. Recruiting gets easier through 2027. Every problem that gets harder — capability, progression, retention and wellbeing — runs through the same small group of people: the managers between the strategy and the workforce. On the published evidence, most Irish employers do not currently believe those managers are ready.

Section 7: Sources, gaps and method


What we could not find

We left these gaps open rather than filling them with our own estimates.


  • No 2026 National Skills Bulletin. SOLAS had not published a 2026 edition at the time of research. The 2025 edition, reporting on 2024 data, is the latest available.

  • No standalone CIPD "HR Practices in Ireland 2026". CIPD publishes a combined 2025-2026 report plus a separate private-sector pay and employment report with January 2026 data. Figures here draw on both.

  • No confirmed like-for-like comparison on two CIPD measures that appear to have moved between survey editions. Both are flagged in Section 5.

  • No CSO labour force projection beyond 2037. The population projections run to 2057. The labour force projections stop at 2037, because fertility assumptions do not affect the labour force over that horizon.

  • No headcount projection for green roles in Ireland. Strategy documents exist from SOLAS and the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs. Neither publishes a workforce number.


On verification. Every figure in this report was checked against the primary publication. Where a figure was available only through secondary reporting on a primary document, and could not be confirmed against the document itself, it was removed rather than published with a caveat.

Primary sources

Every figure in this report traces to one of the publications below.


Method note. Research current to 21 August 2026. Where a figure is described as a projection, the producing body and time horizon are stated. Where a projection is scenario-based, the scenario is named.
The 4.9% Q1 2026 unemployment rate quoted throughout is the CSO Labour Force Survey headline. The Central Bank quotes 5.0% for the same quarter on a seasonally adjusted basis. Both are correct. This report uses the unadjusted LFS figure for consistency with the other CSO measures.
The current CSO projection round uses migration-only variants labelled M1, M2 and M3. Earlier rounds used combined migration and fertility labels. The Department of Education and Youth enrolment model uses M1F2, M2F2 and M3F2, combining CSO migration variants with a single falling-fertility assumption. These labels do not translate across rounds.

Ireland at Work is a series for HR and People leaders at Irish employers. Each edition takes a single question about the workforce and answers it from named sources only.

Fitvision is a people performance partner that connects wellbeing, leadership, and culture, through corporate gym management, wellbeing programmes, and leadership development. We work with organisations across Ireland, delivering on site inside client workplaces.


Empowering People · Elevating Performance


Published September 2026. Research current to 21 August 2026.

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