Official figures show that average industrial earnings in the second quarter of this year were €19.55 an hour, 3.8% higher than a year earlier.
The Central Statistics Office said hourly earnings in the financial sector climbed by 5.7% to €26.93. These figures excluded bonuses.
Over the year, the number of people working in industry fell by 6,800 to 231,400, while those working in the financial sector rose by 4,000 to 84,700.
5,100 industrial workers - 2.2% of the total - were on the national minimum wage in Q2. In the financial sector, the figure was much lower at 100, or 0.1% of the total.
Separate CSO figures showed that 578 working days were lost to industrial disputes in the third quarter of the year, up from zero in the same period last year.
Two disputes began in the three-month period, while a third carried over from the previous quarter. For the first nine months of 2008, 2,782 days were lost, up from 2,097 a year earlier. The manufacturing sector accounted for just over half of the days lost in the nine months.
