Employment in the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector has fallen below 100,000 persons, according to figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The data, released today, Tuesday, November 19, shows that, in quarter three (Q3) of 2019, agriculture, forestry and fishing, when taken together as one sector, employed approximately 99,400 people.
This represents a drop of about 6,000 people compared to the same quarter for 2018.
These figures are rounded to the nearest 100, and account for persons aged 15 years and over.
The second lowest figure is for the transportation and storage sector, which employed some 104,000 people in Q3 of 2019.
The highest employer in that quarter was the wholesale and retail trade sector, which accounted around 301,000 persons, followed by the industrial sector, which employed around 294,000 people.
Data source: CSO
In the image above, comparing the employment figures across sectors for Q3 2018 and Q3 2019, the bar labelled ‘1’ (furthest to the left) represents the agriculture, forestry and fishing sector.
The bar labelled ‘5’ represents transportation and storage, while bars labelled ‘4’ and ‘2’ represent the wholesale/retail and industrial sectors respectively.
When the figure for agriculture, forestry and fishing are seasonally adjusted – which takes account of seasonal patterns in employment – it shows a very slight rise to 99,600 people.
Across the economy as a whole, national employment stood at 2,326,000 in Q3 2019, an annual increase of 53,700 people.