Pay down, but Irish financial services job numbers up in Q1

Figures from Ireland's Central Statistic Office suggest (once again) that it's not completely bleak in the financial services sector. Average earnings have slipped by over 11% on last year, but there are still more people working in the industry than at the end of 2008.

As the chart below shows, average earnings (including bonuses) were €30.37 in Q1 2009, compared to €34.17 at the same point last year - a drop of 11.1%.

But, the CSO says there were 84,300 people working in Ireland's financial services sector in the first quarter of 2009, up from 83,200 at the end of last year. This is down from the highs of Q2 2008, though, when 86,000 people were working in Ireland's financial services sector.

Admittedly, this does seem slightly implausible, considering the fact that redundancy announcements have been emerging throughout this year.

But these job cuts, though increasing in frequency, are not the type of scary figures coming out of other financial centres. The City of London, for example, has 35,000 fewer people employed in financial services in 2009 than the previous year.

Meanwhile, in the worst cases, job cuts in Ireland have been in the hundreds, and the large domestic banks - obviously significant employers - have avoided making wholesale redundancies, even if they have recruitment freezes in place, thanks to state intervention.

Source: Central Statistics Office