This post reviews some initial evidence from the 250 respondents so far to the poll on expected income changes in 2009. About 60% of respondents expect their income to fall this year compared to last. A breakdown by sector and by income level shows that across five broad sectors of the economy, lower paid workers are being spared the worst income cuts. In ICT, wages are expected to be static for the typical worker, regardless of income group.
This post reviews Ireland’s relatively sparse wage data for signs of a real devaluation (or not), before discussing some of the problems in waiting for official data. To light a candle, rather than curse the darkness, the post includes a short poll for readers to complete, on employment and earnings. A successful take-up of the poll would be a real contribution to the debate on earnings in Ireland.
To an economist, “inferior goods” are those we switch away from as we become richer. Between 2000 and 2008, Europeans became 14% richer, while the typical European government increased its share in the economy from 44.7% to 45.4%. The two fastest growing economies, however, the Slovak Republic and Ireland, had exactly opposite experiences, with the Slovak government now the smallest in Europe. It turns out that these countries aside, poorer countries generally saw their governments grow, while wealthier European states saw their governments shrink.
Following last weekend’s European elections, commentators have highlighted a general move to the right and the usual protest vote. An examination of country-level results reveals that the move to the right may be driven more by punishment of governing parties for economic failures than any idealogical shift.
Relationship between government deficits and European election results
Ireland’s property market is currently in rewind. Homes now are at March 2005 values – or July 2004, if asking prices are 10% above closing prices. Figures from daft.ie, the Census and the Dept of the Environment allow an estimate of both the number of homes now worth less than when they were bought – about 725,000, or 40% of homes – and how many of those are in negative equity -about 340,000, or 20% of homes.
An overview of how much the typical worker is taxed in Ireland, compared to the rest of the OECD, reveals Irish workers to have a significantly lower tax burden than the OECD peers. The trend of lower and lower since 2000, so that the average industrial worker was actually subsidised in 2007, now appears not only unsustainable but also reckless.
The US leads the way for many types of statistics – and in particular for their timeliness. The housing market is no different, with a plethora of measures such as prices and volume of transactions out every month.
In Ireland, though, we have to labour under a dearth of timely statistics on a range of economic [...]
Earlier this year, I calculated average salary estimates for the public and private sectors in Ireland. The answer, that the average worker in the private sector earned €40,000 last year, almost €10,000 less than their public sector counterpart, has proved if not controversial than certainly a starting point for debate. Given some of the comments [...]
This week’s daft.ie report revealed some intriguing findings in relation to the current state and trajectory of Ireland’s property market. As was discussed yesterday, for example, while east peaked earlier than west, north has fallen further than south since the peak. One of the conclusions of both these findings is that Dublin and its commuter [...]
On Monday the latest daft.ie report came out, showing that asking prices had fallen just over 4% in the first three months of the year. Yesterday, I changed focus on the blog a little, as it was Budget day, and tried instead to put some numbers on what a potential property tax could raise.
Today, I [...]
