7.6% of all employees in Ireland earn the minimum wage or less.
Over 137,000 people in the country earn the National Minimum Wage (NMW), or less, according to National Minimum Wage Estimates from the Labour Force Survey (LFS) at the end of 2018.
Issued by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) on Friday, the figure equates to 7.6% of all employees in the country, down from 8.6% in 2017.
The number of employees who self-reported earning less than the NMW was 24,500, a slight decrease from the year before.
The same report found that 1,679,600 people were earning more than the National Minimum Wage, which fell by 5.2% since the year before.
Commenting on the report, statistician Jim Dalton, said: “Questions on the National Minimum Wage status of employees have been included in the LFS since Q2 2016. Today’s report provides estimates based on the most recently available data up to Q4 2018.”
The results also show that females are more likely than males to earn the NMW or less and this has been a consistent feature of the series since it began in 2016.
Of all the people earning the NMW or less, 55.3% were female, while 44.7% were male.
More information from the report can be found here.
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