Irish jobs growth dropped to a three-year low in the third quarter, hit by a sharp slowdown in the once booming construction industry but economists remained upbeat about the broader economy.
Official figures on Thursday showed the number of people in employment rose at an annual rate of 3.3 percent in the three months to end-August, down from 3.9 percent in the previous three month period and at its slowest pace since the third quarter of 2004 when it hit 3.1 percent.
The total in employment increased by nearly 68,000 to 2,140,900, with non-Irish nationals - the majority of them from the 12 new European Union accession states - tentatively estimated to account for nearly 72 percent of the increase.
"I think the numbers are still impressive - 68,000 jobs year-on-year is phenomenal," said Bloxham Stockbrokers Chief Economist Alan McQuaid. The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate slipped to 4.4 percent from 4.5 percent in the previous three months, Ireland's Central Statistics Office (CSO) said in its Quarterly National Household Survey, which runs from December to November rather than following the calendar year.
"The drop in jobs growth is entirely explained by softer conditions in the construction industry but outside that the pace of growth has stabilised and may even be increasing in some sectors," said Austin Hughes, chief economist at IIB Bank.
"It suggests that outside the construction industry the economy remains extremely resilient and ... that some of the more gloomy forecasts may be too pessimistic."
The CSO said employment growth in the construction sector slowed to 1.7 percent in the year to the third quarter, compared to an annual rate of 6.7 percent in the previous quarter and a rate of 10.2 percent in the same period last year.
A cooling in Ireland's seemingly unstoppable property and construction sectors has dented a national sense of well-being built up over a decade of boom, with turbulence in global financial markets and radically revised forecasts for domestic economic growth adding to jitters.
The number of immigrant workers, whose record numbers have helped drive Ireland's so-called "Celtic Tiger" economy in recent years, is also expected to drop significantly in 2008.
The CSO estimated that in the third quarter there were an estimated 341,600 non-nationals in the Irish Republic, of which 248,000 were in employment, accounting for nearly 12 percent of the workforce.
"There's no doubt that things are slowing down but ... we're still coming from a very high level," Bloxham's McQuaid said. "I think employment growth will continue to prosper for the next few quarters anyway - it may not be as strong as it was before but it will still be way above what others are doing."