Baby boom sees women drop their jobs

IRELAND’S recent baby boom has seen the number of women going to work drop sharply, a new analysis has shown.

The cost of childcare and long commutes are making families decide to leave one parent at home to bring up the children, according to the study by Dr John McCartney, former officer at the Central Statistics Office. At the height of the boom in 2007, almost 70% of the working-age population were either at work or looking for work.

But that figure has now dropped to just above 60% despite strong jobs growth, fastfalling unemployment and rising wages.

Dr McCartney puts the decline down to mothers staying at home to bring up their baby-boom children as they are left with little once they pay for expensive childcare while they go to work.

Ireland has one of the highest birth rates in the EU at an average of 1.77 babies per woman, just below the highest, France, at 1.9. Dr McCartney, a professional statistician, says the fall in working women is because ‘we had that big baby boom’.

The decline mirrors the boom from 2007 to 2012, when almost half a million babies were born in Ireland, his research shows.

Dr McCartney, research director at estate agents Savills, added: ‘I think it’s probably women, if we’re realistic about it, who’ve had kids, are at home with kids. They were going to go back to work but they’ve thought, “It’s an hour, an hour-and-a-half’s commute each way, after we get the kids into creche”... And when you’ve paid your childminder or creche, how much on the deal are you up? And I’d say a lot of women have decided not to bother.’

However, Dr McCartney said the drop-off of such mothers from the workplace ‘is likely to be temporary’ and that the parents opting to stay at home now are likely to ‘start to return to the workforce over the next ten years’.