Employment levels increased by 1.8% last year, according to the latest Quarterly National Household Survey from the Central Statistics Office today.
This compares with average annual increases of 1.4% in 2002, 2.9% in 2001 and 4.7% in 2000.
The CSO figures also show that employment growth in the fourth quarter of 2003 was considerably stronger than in earlier quarters with the numbers at work increased by 44,600 or 2.5% in the year.
Full time employment accounted for over three quarters of the annual increase. This was the opposite to the earlier quarters where part time work accounted for most of the growth.
The CSO said that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell back to 4.6% in the fourth quarter of 2003 from 4.9% in the previous three months.
There were 86,500 people unemployed in the fourth quarter of 2003, this was a seasonal decrease of 12,400 in the quarter and an annual increase of 2,400 on the fourth quarter of 2002.
The CSO data reveals that the labour force increased by 47,100 in the year to 1.902 million. This accounted for 60.2% of all persons aged 15 or over compared with 59.7% in the fourth quarter of 2002. The male participation rate increased slightly in the year from 70.8% to 71% while the female rate increased from 48.9% to 49.7%.
Today's Household survey shows that employment growth was strongest in the health and construction sectors. The only sectors to show a fall in job levels were the agriculture, forestry and fishing and the other production industries sectors.
During the fourth quarter of the year, employment grew by 4.1% in the BMW region and by 2% in the southern and eastern region.
The fact that growth of this magnitude was achieved in a very tough year for the international economy will be seen as a tribute to the robustness and flexibility of the Irish labour market, and should underpin confidence about our economic prospects in the months ahead.
IIB economist Austin Hughes said the figures were very positive, with private sector and full-time jobs both strengthening. He said low interest rates, demographics and public sector employment were behind the particular strength of the Irish figures compared with similar data from other countries.
