The Equality Commission have published their 25th Monitoring Report. This report provides a breakdown of the composition of the North's workforce in the year 2014. Previous trends show no sign of abating. Parity will be achieved in 2018.
The composition of Catholics in the workforce has increased to 47.4% (+0.4%) in 2014 while the Protestant proportion has decreased to 52.6%.
The reason the trend has continued in 2014 was due to the percentage of appointees from a Catholic community background (51.8%) being greater that those appointed to jobs from a Protestant background (48.2%) and because the Protestant percentage of leavers from the workforce (50.7%) being greater than their Catholic counterparts (49.3%).
Note that the Catholic percentage of applicants to the workforce was 52.3%, somewhat higher than the 51.8% appointed.
It should also be noted that the proportion of Protestants at retirement age is c66%. The 50.7% leaving the workforce each year is much lower than this.
The event to look forward to is the point where this change is reflected politically. There is a delay in this as older age cohorts have a higher propensity to vote than younger cohorts. Nonetheless, that day is just a matter of time.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. The delay is most definitely down to apathy. Yes the older protestants are more likely to vote than younger catholics but apathy has increased in the last couple of elections.
ReplyDeleteLooking at the electorate in December I see that there is an increase of c25,000 people since the last election. I am not sure how many of these are nationalists but a quick calculation shows that 33% comes from majority nationalist area councils, 31% from majority Protestant and 35% from mixed councils (Belfast, Causeway Coast and Glens, Armagh Banbridge Craigavon)
The first graph you posted showed no growth in the nationalist vote in the last 20 years.
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