The north’s economy may have faced many challenges during 2024, but unemployment isn’t necessarily one of them.
As we close out 2024, official government statistics have revealed the labour market was in better shape this year than we previously thought.
Earlier this month, it emerged that a data processing error by the Office of National Statistics (ONS) had understated the strength of the north’s labour market for the past two years.
The employment rate actually recovered to pre-pandemic level in the summer of 2023 and hit a record high of 73% at the start of 2024.
The final labour market report of 2024 from the Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency (Nisra), said the number of people in paid employment in Northern Ireland reached an all-time high of 831,780 in September.
That was around 9,000 more than the same time last year.
The same report showed the official unemployment rate fell to record low of 1.6%.
Such figures won’t be a surprise to many prospective employers in the north, who are struggling to find enough skilled workers to meet their needs.
So where are they working, and who are the north’s biggest employers?
To answer that question, we have to turn to the work of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland.
Every year, it publishes the ‘Fair Employment Monitoring Report’ to reflect its work determining whether members of each community are afforded fair participation in the workplace.
The report, which includes employers with at least 26 staff, also provides us with the headcount data for each company and public authority.
And while it takes the Equality Commission more than a year to process and publish the data (the latest report covers 2022), it nevertheless lifts the lid on the composition of our labour market.
PUBLIC SECTOR
Unsurprisingly, the biggest employer in the north are the five health trusts, who between them, employed just over 85,000 people in 2022.
One third of those workers were employed in the Belfast Trust, which had a staff of 25,747.
The only individual public authority to employ more people in 2022 was the Education Authority, which topped the Fair Employment table with 27,579 staff.
The Department of Finance, which is the legal employer for civil servants in Stormont’s nine departments, had 25,024 staff on its payroll in 2022.
Next on the top ten list is the PSNI (7,299) and the Civil Service (3,879), which includes other government bodies such as HMRC, passport office and Border Force.
Despite being privatised in 2011, Royal Mail (3,369) is included among the 88 public authorities assessed by the Equality Commission.
Other notable public sector employers include the Housing Executive (2,875), Belfast City Council (2,223) and Ulsterbus Ltd (2,131).
PRIVATE SECTOR
Turning to the private sector, the Fair Employment Monitoring Report confirms Tesco is by far the north’s largest private employer.
It reported 8,391 employees in 2022, almost 500 more than the previous year.
Queen’s University Belfast is next on the list with 6,569 workers, more than double that of Ulster University, which reported 2,622.
Moy Park was one of the few big private sector employers to reduce its workforce, according to the data, employing 5,072 in 2022.
The Henderson Group, which supplies around 500 Spar, Vivo and Eurospar stores in the north, reported 4,810 staff, ahead of Asda on 2,604.
The list also reveals the scale of agency employment in Northern Ireland.
Two of the biggest private sector employers in 2022 were recruitment agencies: The Recruitment Co Ltd (4,591) and Staffline (4,348).
There is no further breakdown of which sector or company those staff were employed in.
Although it has cut some of its operations in the north subsequent to the submission of the data, BT’s headcount in 2022 stood at 3,232.
The report also revealed one of the biggest workforce expansions of recent times in the north’s private sector, with PwC adding 646 people, taking its workforce to 3,057 in 2022.
Citigroup also continued to expand, growing to 3,012 staff, overtaking Short Bros for the first time to break into the top ten.
The aerospace firm, now owned by Spirit Aero, reported 2,787 staff in 2022.
The data also reveals Marks & Spencer (2,354) overtook Sainsbury’s (2,183).
Other major private sector employers of note included call centre firm Telepeformance (2,511), Allstate (2,276) and Mount Charles (2,043).
The 33rd annual monitoring report included returns from 105 public authorities and 3,702 private sector enterprises.
For the first time since the annual report began more than 30 years agoo, the share of the total monitored workforce showed more Catholics (50.1%) employed than Protestants (49.9%).
