Irish people work more years than Europeans, and Irish men work longer than women, figures show
The working lives of Irish people continue to get longer, with a young person beginning their career set to spend an average of nearly 40 years in the labour force, new figures show.
Irish men and women work several years more than the European average at 39.4 years, up from 35.6 years back in 2013, figures from Eurostat suggest.
Eurostat defines the working life as the estimation of the number of years a 15-year-old is expected to be in the labour force — either employed or unemployed — throughout his or her life.
The expected duration of the working life in 2022 across the EU is 36.5 years. It is longer for men (at 38.6 years) than for women (34.2 years).
Ireland’s working lives are longer than the European average for both men and women.
The estimated working life for a man in Ireland in 2022 was 42.3 years, compared to 36.3 years for women.
After the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark, men in Ireland are expected to work for the longest across the EU.
There was a gender gap across many countries in terms of the working lives of men and women, with Ireland again ranking highly.
“The countries with the greatest gender gaps in 2022, were Italy (8.9 years), Greece (7.0 years), Romania (6.9 years), Malta (6.8 years), Cyprus (6.3 years), Ireland and Czechia (both 6.0 years),” Eurostat said.
Ireland has been closing its gender gap in recent years, however.
In 2002, men were expected to have a working life that was 11.6 years longer than women. Twenty years later, that had dropped to six years.
Longer working lives have prompted debate in Ireland about the pension age, with the Government announcing last year that people would be given the choice to work until the age of 70 in return for a higher State pension.
The current pension had been set to change to 67 back in 2021, but this decision was reversed and remains at 66. The Government also said the long-term sustainability of the State pension would be addressed over time through “gradual, incremental increases in social insurance rates”.
As a whole, Europeans are working for a lot longer than they used to. In 2022, the average working life stood at 32.4 years and rose steadily to 35.9 years in 2019.
It then fell back in 2020 to 35.6 years, which Eurostat said was linked to the covid-19 pandemic.
“Despite the halt in 2020, the indicator has witnessed a constant growth in the years of working life over the past 20 years for both sexes,” it said.
“Although men are expected to work longer than women, the gender gap has reduced, with increasing female participation in the labour market.
“Indeed, the estimated expected duration of working life for men was 35.7 years in 2002, while for women it was 28.9 years. Compared with 2002, the gender gap of the expected duration of working life was consequently narrower in 2022 (4.4 years compared with 6.8 years).”
In the EU, the working life is the longest in the Netherlands (43.2 years), Sweden (42.6 years) and Norway (41.2 years).
The shortest working lives are found in Romania (31.5 years), Italy (32.2 years) and Bulgaria (33.6 years).
Lithuania and Estonia were the only EU member states where the gender gap was negative, with women expected to work 1.6 years and 0.8 years more than men, respectively, with Malta seeing the biggest change in the last 20 years, from a gap of 20.4 years to 6.8 years.
