Methodology

Data sources

We use two CSO datasets:

• DEA06 — Annual Earnings by County: Provides mean and median annual earnings broken down by county, gender, and age group. Updated annually (October).
• DEA08 — Annual Earnings by County and Sector: Provides mean and median annual earnings by county and NACE economic sector. Updated annually (October).

How the data is collected

The CSO's EAADS series is based on administrative data from the Revenue Commissioners, covering all PAYE employments. This means it captures virtually every employee in Ireland, not just survey respondents. Earnings include basic pay, overtime, bonuses, and other taxable remuneration.

What "median" and "mean" mean

• Median: The middle value — half of workers earn more, half earn less. Less affected by very high earners.
• Mean: The arithmetic average. Can be pulled up by high earners.

We default to median as the primary figure because it better represents what a typical worker earns.

Limitations

• Data is grouped by broad NACE economic sectors (e.g. "Information and Communication"), not specific job titles.
• Some county × sector combinations are suppressed by the CSO to protect confidentiality where sample sizes are small.
• Self-employed income is not included — only PAYE employments.
• Data is typically 12-18 months behind the current year.

Update schedule

We refresh our data monthly from the CSO PxStat API. The underlying CSO datasets are updated annually (usually October). When new data is released, it appears on this site within a month.

Open data

All data used on this site is freely available from the CSO at data.cso.ie. We encourage you to explore the original datasets.