Men accounted for almost three quarters of Ireland’s top earners last year, according to the Central Statistics Office (CSO).
The agency’s latest analysis of earnings broken down by gender and county indicated that men represented 73.6 per cent of those in the top 1 per cent income bracket (those earning above €300,000 a year).
The proportion of women among the State’s top one per cent of earners is, however, increasing.
Since 2013, the proportion of women in this high-earning bracket has increased by almost seven percentage points (up from 19.5 per cent) and is up by five percentage points since 2018 (when it was 21.4 per cent).
Men accounted for 61.5 per cent of the top 25 per cent of earners with women accounting for 38.5 per cent.
The gender representation across total employments (those active for at least 50 weeks of the year) was relatively equal with males accounting for 50.9 per cent and females accounting for 49.1 per cent.
In 2023, males represented a higher proportion of the total employments in eight of the 13 economic sectors compared with females.
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In the traditionally male-dominated construction sector, men accounted for 85.9 per cent of total employments, while the remaining 14.1 per cent of employments were held by women.
Women accounted for the majority (72.6 per cent) of the total employments in the education sector but only a third on the top 1 per cent of education earners.
On a county-by-county basis, more than half of the State’s top one per cent of earners were living in Dublin (56.7 per cent), the CSO said.
Dublin also had the highest median (or mid-value) earnings in 2023 at €47,873 which was 10.8 per cent higher than those for the State as a whole €43,221.
In terms of the highest median earnings, Dublin was followed by Kildare (€46,819), Meath (€44,902), Wicklow (€44,750), and Cork (€44,348), each of which had median annual earnings greater than those of the State (€43,221).
The lowest median annual earnings were recorded in Donegal (€35,010), Monaghan (€35,894), and Kerry (€37,151) in 2023.
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