Mackerel sky, Dublin tonight.

Thanks so much to Philip Lane, Agustin Benetrix @tcdeconomics.bsky.social, Alan Barrett @esri.ie ie and all the distinguished participants for my birthday conference @ria.ie and this absorbing special issue of my favourite journal.

And the patterns are fairly persistent:

And one sector provides an interesting exception to the lackluster 2019-2024 sectoral real earnings growth in Ireland. It's the Information and Communication sector (shown below as IT), already with relatively high weekly earnings and still racing ahead as it has for many years.

If it's economics that drives voting in general elections, the question for Ireland today is whether it's microeconomics or macro. (See the NYT piece by @fotoole). These graphs quantify the contrast between rocketing aggregate employment growth and below peak average real earnings.

What a change globalization brought for Ireland. This annual data going back eighty years shows how, when fiscal policy was brought under control and globalization got under way in the early 1990s, the dynamics of the Irish economy changed utterly.

Take a look at the jump in Irish employment. 100,000 in the past twelve months alone. Will the approaching de-globalization clouds be the peak of this roller-coaster?