Equality Commission 21st Monitoring Report

On 16 December 2011 the Equality Comission published its 21st Monitoring Report. This report gives us a breakdown of the numbers and percentage of Protestants and Catholics in the both the public and private sectors of the workforce in Northern Ireland for the year 2010. Protestants represented 54.1% of the workforce, down by 0.5% in 2009. Catholics in the workforce stood at 45.9%, an increase of 0.5% from the 2009 figure of 45.4%. The Protestant percentage has again declined as the Catholic percentage has increased. This trend has been constant as is represented in the following graph






The reason why this graph is converging is due to the fact that the numbers of Catholic appointees to the workforce in 2010 was 52.0% which is significantly greater than the amount of Catholics in the overall workforce. The numbers of Protestants appointed  to the workforce was 48.0% which is significantly lower than their representation in the entire workforce.

The Equality Commission Report for 2010 also shows us the composition of applicants to join the workforce by community background. In 2009 the Catholic percentage stood at 50.7% and the Protestant percentage was 49.3%.





In 2009, for the first time ever the number of Catholics seeking employment was greater than the number of Protestants (by 10,465). Currently there is a difference of 8.2% between the two blocks, a decrease of 1% point from 2009. If this trend continues we can expect further 'greening' of the workforce in the years ahead and parity reached in 2018. As two thirds of students in NI universities and 53.1% of students in NI schools are from a Catholic/Nationalist background the trend could even accelerate.