Methodology

Salaries.ie provides accurate, transparent salary data for Ireland. Every figure on this site is derived from official Central Statistics Office (CSO) datasets with no manual adjustments or editorial overrides. This page explains our data sources, processing methods, and limitations in full.

Data sources

We draw on eight CSO datasets to build a comprehensive picture of earnings, living costs, and labour market conditions across Ireland:

Earnings data

• DEA06 — Annual Earnings by County: Mean and median annual earnings broken down by county, gender, and age group. Covers 2011 to 2024. This is our primary dataset for county-level salary comparisons and gender pay gap analysis.
• DEA08 — Annual Earnings by Sector: Mean and median annual earnings by county and NACE economic sector. Covers 2011 to 2024. This powers our sector breakdowns, showing how pay varies by industry within each county.
• EHQ03 — Quarterly Earnings by Sector: Average weekly earnings by NACE sector and employee type, released quarterly. We annualise these figures (weekly earnings multiplied by 52) to provide the most up-to-date salary estimates, bridging the 12-18 month lag in the annual survey.

Cost of living and demographics

• RIH02 — RTB Average Rent: Monthly average rent by county from the Residential Tenancies Board, reported via the CSO. We use this to calculate rent-to-salary ratios, giving a practical measure of housing affordability relative to local earnings.
• CPM01 — Consumer Price Index: National inflation data used to convert nominal salary figures into real terms, so users can see whether wages are genuinely rising or merely keeping pace with the cost of living.

Labour market context

• FP001 — Census Population: Population counts and growth rates from the 2016 and 2022 censuses. This contextualises salary data by showing which counties are growing fastest.
• SAP2022 — Census Education: Percentage of the population with third-level education by county, drawn from Census 2022. Higher education attainment correlates strongly with local salary levels.
• LRM17 — Live Register: Monthly unemployment figures by region from the Department of Social Protection. We map regional Live Register data to individual counties to provide local unemployment context alongside salary figures.

Data collection method

The CSO's Earnings Analysis using Administrative Data Sources (EAADS) series, which underpins DEA06 and DEA08, is based on administrative records from the Revenue Commissioners. It captures data from all PAYE employments in the State rather than relying on survey sampling. This gives it near-census-level coverage of the employed workforce.

Earnings figures include basic pay, overtime, bonuses, commissions, and all other forms of taxable remuneration reported through the PAYE system. This comprehensive definition ensures the data reflects total employee compensation, not just base salary.

How we process the data

Our automated pipeline fetches data directly from the CSO's PxStat JSON-stat API. The processing steps include:

• Annualisation: Weekly earnings from the quarterly survey (EHQ03) are multiplied by 52 to produce comparable annual figures.
• Year-on-year changes: We calculate percentage changes between consecutive years to show salary growth trends.
• CPI adjustment: Nominal earnings are adjusted using the Consumer Price Index (CPM01) to derive real-terms salary changes, accounting for inflation.
• Rankings: Counties and sectors are ranked by median earnings, growth rate, and other metrics to enable quick comparisons.
• Rent-to-salary ratios: Annual rent (monthly RTB figures multiplied by 12) is divided by median annual earnings to produce an affordability index for each county.
• Regional mapping: Live Register data, which is published at regional level, is mapped to the 26 individual counties to provide localised unemployment figures.

Median vs mean

We present both median and mean (average) earnings throughout the site:

• Median: The middle value when all salaries are ranked from lowest to highest. Half of workers earn more, half earn less. The median is resistant to distortion by a small number of very high earners.
• Mean: The arithmetic average of all salaries. It can be pulled upward by high earners, making it less representative of a typical worker's experience.

We default to median as the primary figure because it more accurately reflects what a typical employee earns. Both figures are available for transparency.

Limitations

Users should be aware of the following limitations when interpreting data on this site:

• Broad sector classifications: Earnings are grouped by NACE economic sectors (e.g. "Information and Communication"), not by specific job titles or roles. A software engineer and a call-centre worker in the same sector are averaged together.
• Statistical suppression: The CSO suppresses data where sample sizes are too small, to protect confidentiality. Some county-sector combinations therefore have no data available.
• No self-employed: Only PAYE employments are included. Self-employed, freelance, and contractor income is not captured.
• Publication lag: Annual earnings data is typically published 12-18 months after the reference year. We supplement this with quarterly data, which has a shorter lag but uses a slightly different employer-reported methodology.
• Quarterly methodology differences: The quarterly earnings survey (EHQ03) is employer-reported and uses a different methodology from the Revenue-based annual data. Figures from the two sources are not directly comparable.
• Rent data scope: RTB average rent data reflects new tenancies registered in each period, not the rents paid by all existing tenants. Actual average rents across all tenancies may differ.

Update schedule

Our pipeline runs automated checks monthly. Each dataset follows its own publication schedule:

• Annual earnings (DEA06, DEA08): Published once per year, typically in October.
• Quarterly earnings (EHQ03): Published four times per year, roughly three months after each quarter ends.
• Rent, CPI, and Live Register: Updated on their own monthly or quarterly schedules by the CSO and RTB.
• Census data (FP001, SAP2022): Updated following each census (most recently 2022).

When new data is published, it typically appears on this site within a few days of our next automated run.

Open data commitment

Every dataset used on Salaries.ie is freely available from the Central Statistics Office under its open data policy. All source data can be accessed and verified at data.cso.ie, and programmatically via the PxStat JSON-stat API. We encourage independent verification of any figures presented on this site.

Reproducibility

Our data pipeline is fully deterministic: given the same CSO inputs, it produces the same outputs every time. There are no manual adjustments, editorial overrides, or subjective weightings applied to the underlying figures. What the CSO publishes is what you see.