Dáil Éireann Debate, Thursday - 22 February 2024
245. Deputy Bernard J. Durkan asked the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine the extent to which employment continues in the agrifood and fishing sectors; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [8614/24]
View answerMy Department continually monitors the levels of employment in the agriculture and wider agri-food sector. Employment figures are primarily sourced from the Central Statistics Office's (CSO) quarterly Labour Force Survey, for which full-year data is currently available up to 2022 (full-year 2023 figures are expected shortly).
Looking at trends over the period 2019 to 2022, employment in the overall agri-food sector has grown by 800 to 164,900 people. This represents 6.5% of the total workforce. The average numbers employed in agriculture, forestry and fishing were 101,200 in 2022, (-1,400 over the period 2019 to 2022), while the number employed in manufacture of food products remained steady at 48,800. There were 9,000 employed in the manufacture of beverages (+2,200) and about 6,000 employed in the wood and wood-processing sector.
It should be noted that the Labour Force Survey is based on the main employment a person reports in the survey. The Census of Agriculture recognises that many farm holders and family members work part-time on the land in addition to their main employment, indicating that there were 278,580 family and regular non-family workers on Irish farms in 2020. This number has actually increased from each of the two previous agriculture censuses, with 272,016 family and regular non-family workers in 2010 and 257,948 in 2000.
