Quarterly Economic Commentary, Summer 2017.

2017 has seen certain countervailing trends emerge as to the overall performance of the Irish economy. On the positive side, labour market data illustrate that the pace of employment creation and subsequent reduction in unemployment increased in the present year. In the previous Commentary, we had believed the Irish economy would experience an unemployment rate of just under 5.5 per cent by the end of 2018, we now believe this will happen earlier in that year. While most sectors of the economy are experiencing employment growth, the construction sector, along with the information and communications sector, registers the largest recent increase