Christopher Payne

I'm really good.

Thanks for having me, Jess.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we've just published our hiring trends update.

And I think meta aside, because that's the big news story right now, the Irish labour market is actually still in a relatively strong position.

We're just seeing that businesses are being more cautious and it's a more targeted approach to hiring.

So obviously our unemployment rate remains really low.

It's about 4.8% in April.

But we are seeing that job growth is moderating rather than accelerating.

So I think right now it's not a hiring free story.

It's more of a selective hiring story.

But in good news, our own research that you've just mentioned has told us that employers are telling us they will be increasing hiring.

So 50% or so are going to increase hiring in H2.

So it's not all bad news.

yeah there are there are and i think the the easiest way to sometimes think about it is to link it to where are our large infrastructure projects in ireland or where do we have problems so obviously anything linked to housing or metro north or uh you know m road bypasses things like that so we're seeing production is particularly strong at the moment of manufacturing so they've

About 70% of employers have told us they're going to be increasing hiring in H2.

And then it's the usual suspects.

It's engineering, it's construction.

Funnily enough, 51% of IT companies did tell us they plan on increasing hiring in H2.

So they do plan on hiring more staff.