Written answer
Employment Data
Reliable county-level estimates are unavailable from the Labour Force Survey; Census recorded 39,934 employed in Laois in 2022, while Midlands employment rose to 166,700 by Q2 2026.
181. Deputy Sean Fleming asked the Taoiseach the number of people in employment in County Laois in 2022; and the current estimate level of employment in 2026. [73483/26]
Comment on this
The exact information requested by the Deputy is not available.
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) is the official source of estimates of employment in the State. The most recent figures available are for Q2 2026.
Due to the methodology and sample size of the survey it is not possible to produce reliable county estimates from the LFS.
Regional estimates of employment are produced by NUTS 3 level. NUTS are the geocode standard developed and regulated by Eurostat. The NUTS 3 Midland region includes counties Laois, Longford, Offaly and Westmeath.
According to the LFS, there were 159,600 people in employment in the Midlands in Q2 2022. This has since increased to 166,700 in Q2 2026.
While the information at county level is not provided by the LFS, administrative data sources of employment estimates, which are available on an annual basis, may provide further insight on employments.
Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS) outputs contain employment figures on an annual basis, based on Revenue Commissioner’s employee tax data. It should be noted that EAADS estimates are for employees only, and do not include persons who are self-employed. Please also note that the estimate provided by EAADS relate to the number of employments, rather than number of employees. The annual employment estimates from the EAADS dataset are restricted to employments which were active during the month of October, in line with Eurostat requirements relating to Structure of Earnings Statistics. The EAADS time series begins in 2011 and the most recent figures available are for 2025.
Census does produce employment figures at county level, though it should be noted that there are differences in the methodology used to produce Census employment statistics compared with the estimates from the Labour Force Survey, including how an individual is classified as employed or not. Census figures show that there were 39,934 people in employment in Laois in 2022.
Table 1 shows the employment by NUTS3 Regions, Q2 2022 – Q2 2026 (LFS)
Table 2 shows the total number of employments by county, 2022-2025 (EAADS).
Employment by NUTS3
Number of employments by County