COVID-19 and its impact on Irish job market

There have been loads of analysis done on COVID-19 impact on U.S.A. and on world’s economy but unfortunately I don’t see much of an in-depth analysis done in particular how the COVID 19 would impact Irish job market. This analysis is more focussed toward the COVID-19 impact on Irish job market and on sustainability and continuity of people’s jobs. It will also look into factors impacting the new jobs during and post COVID 19 period. I am sharing my analysis here, hoping that it will help all segments of our group members to see how big the risk and what best they can do to minimize the impact.

What is the real impact in Irish job market: The impact is of three kinds –

(1) Low consumption – The necessary government restrictions on COVID -19 have impacted the consumer demand. At this time , all the non-essential for life products and services are worst affected. Hospitality, construction , Aviation , manufacturing , automobile , all these industries are facing big time hit due to a sudden and unplanned disruption in consumer demand. Clearly all these industries were not prepared for this type demand depletion and hence had to cut their cost in some way or the other.

(2)Reduction is government spending – As of 2nd April’20 there were 140K jobs were lost and still 400k jobs are at risk. The government is compensating to people for their loss. 300,000 people have already claimed for the COVID-19 relief benefits. This would draw a significant amount from the treasury and government will have to cut down its spending in civil Infrastructure , I.T. infrastructure and other welfare schemes that create new jobs to people through firms in public-private partnership..

(3) Trade imbalance and Disruption in Supply chain – With a case on production , manufacturing and services in many parts of the world, Irish industries are seeing the trade imbalance. This has also caused a disruption in the supply chain. According to the simulations of the bullwhip effect, the worst affect would come in few months from now. So the Irish business will suffer even after the COVID-19 is over. How long they would suffer – difficult to tell at so early in stage but it could be an year or more. The loss in economy will have direct impact on job loss.

What is the size of this impact :

We haven’t reached at the peak of this pandemic so it’s difficult to size down the impact. We need to remember that all the measure of social distancing and personal hygiene is to prevent us from Virus but the problem will remain until a vaccine a developed , tested and released for human use and at this time we don’t know how long the testing of vaccine (claimed) will take and whether it will be successful. But one things is for sure that the impact witnessed till date is not even the half of what is expected. If , what we have seen so far is “bad” then the road further will be worse until it’s over.

How long the impact will last :

At this time , no one can estimate this , scientists , economist not even the government. Its very early to say anything on this. However we can just benchmark , the impact of 2008 crisis was felt even after 1.5 years and this time the problem is even bigger but at the same time there have been few other variables affected the economy so that makes an apple to orange comparison with the last crisis.

Sectors with highest job loss:

Although the restrictions and COVID -19 have impacted almost all the business sectors but the hardest hit are hospitality , construction, Aviation , Automobile , manufacturing .