Official figures show that average weekly earnings in the final three months of last year were 0.6% lower than a year earlier, though this was mainly due to fall in the number of hours worked.
The Central Statistics Office said average weekly earnings in Q4 of 2009 were €716.09, down from €720.57 a year earlier. But average hourly earnings crept up 0.9% to €22.36. Hourly earnings were marginally higher in the private sector, but fell 0.3% in the public sector.
Average weekly earnings in the private sector fell by 2.1% over the 12 months. Earnings in the public sector rose 0.6%, but the CSO points out that this did not include the deduction of the pension levy introduced in March last year.
Weekly earnings fell in nine of the 13 sectors covered by the figures, with the biggest falls in transport and storage (8.7%) and information and communication (7.1%). The CSO said there were bigger wage drops in smaller companies. There was a fall of 5.2% in earnings in companies with fewer than 50 workers, but an increase of 1.4% in firms with more than 250 workers.
