A chara, – Dan O’Brien’s article on comparative earnings in the Irish public and private sectors (Business, March 8th) revolves around a very crude comparison of average weekly earnings in the two sectors which shows, for example, that average public sector earnings in the first quarter of 2009 were 48 per cent higher than in the private sector.
However, this fails to take account of the very different composition of employment in the two sectors. Thus, in 2009, 47 per cent of public sector employees were in professional and technical occupations compared with just 17 per cent in the private sector. By contrast, 23 per cent of private sector workers were classified as operatives or in sales occupations compared with just 2 per cent for the public sector. Accordingly, one would expect public sector earnings to be considerably higher than those in the private sector.
Last October the Central Statistics Office published a report which compared earnings in the two sectors taking into account differences between them in terms of occupations, educational qualifications, age, gender, hours worked and a number of other variables. This showed that, when allowance is made for these compositional differences, average weekly earnings in the public sector in 2009 were 14 per cent above the private sector, having fallen from 19 per cent in 2007. The public sector premium fell further, to 11 per cent, in 2010. For permanent, full-time, employees aged between 25-59 the 2010 differential was just 8 per cent.
These data indicate that, comparing like with like, the earnings differential between the two sectors, while real, is nowhere near as large as that suggested in O’Brien’s article, and has declined substantially in recent years. – Is mise,
Dr PROINNSIAS
BREATHNACH,
Department of Geography
& National Institute for
Regional and Spatial
Analysis,
National University of
Ireland Maynooth,
Co Kildare.