Ireland job openings fall 4.8% year on year in Morgan McKinley monitor

Morgan McKinley recorded 4.8% fewer professional job openings across Ireland in the third quarter of 2026 than a year earlier, RTÉ reported on 9 October. Vacancies edged up from the previous quarter, but registrations with the recruitment firm rose sharply, giving workers and employers a mixed picture of hiring activity.

The firm’s latest employment monitor put vacancies 0.2% above the second-quarter level, according to RTÉ. Jobseeker registrations rose 14% from the previous quarter and 51% from a year earlier. Those changes describe activity recorded by one recruiter; the report did not provide absolute counts of vacancies or registrants.

What the Morgan McKinley figures measure

Morgan McKinley bases its monitor on monthly records of new permanent and contract vacancies and people registering with the firm to find work, RTÉ reported. A vacancy recorded by the firm is therefore part of its recruitment activity, rather than a count of every opening across Ireland. The percentages cannot be converted into numbers of jobs from the figures reported.

The rise in registrations also does not mean the same number of people joined the unemployment rolls. RTÉ said the monitor described workers exploring other opportunities while remaining in their current jobs. Registration with a recruiter records an interest in finding work; it does not establish whether a person has lost a job.

Keevans identified AI, cyber security, engineering, construction, compliance and employment law as areas where employers still faced shortages. Her assessment places the broader increase in candidate registrations alongside continued competition for particular skills. The monitor does not quantify those shortages in the figures reported by RTÉ.

How AI is affecting recruitment

The monitor found that employers expected practical AI capability in finance, human resources, marketing and operations, RTÉ reported. It also described businesses handling more AI-assisted applications and AI-generated CVs, with concerns about whether candidates were authentic. These are findings attributed to the recruitment firm’s research, without separate counts in RTÉ’s report.

For applicants, the monitor points to two simultaneous pressures: more registrations with the recruiter and employer demand for particular skills. For employers, Keevans’ comments indicate that a larger pool of available candidates has not removed competition for specialists. The reported figures do not show how many individual people applied for each vacancy.

What official Irish employment figures show

The Central Statistics Office’s Labour Force Survey offers a different measure of Ireland’s labour market. The CSO calls its household survey the official measure of employment and unemployment. Its latest figures cited here cover the second quarter of 2026, so they provide context for the recruiter’s third-quarter monitor, rather than a matching measure for the same period.

The CSO estimated that 2,839,300 people were employed in the second quarter, up 21,200, or 0.8%, from a year earlier. It estimated 151,000 unemployed people aged 15 to 74, with an unemployment rate of 5.1% under International Labour Organisation criteria, compared with 4.8% a year earlier.

Those official figures cannot establish whether unemployment changed during the third quarter covered by Morgan McKinley’s monitor. Nor does the recruiter’s 51% annual rise in registrations imply a corresponding change in the national jobless rate: the survey estimates employment status across households, while the monitor counts people registering with one firm.

The CSO also recorded 153,800 part-time workers who wanted more hours for more pay in the second quarter. Its survey found employment in professional, scientific and technical activities fell by 17,100, or 8.2%, year on year. That sectoral employment figure measures people in work, not the vacancies in Morgan McKinley’s records.

The reported monitor gives no absolute vacancy or registration totals, and the available account does not set out enough detail to assess seasonal effects or the recruiter’s coverage across occupations. The firm’s inspected press-release listing did not include the third-quarter monitor. For now, the new percentages and Keevans’ comments are available through RTÉ’s account, while the CSO figures provide a separate official baseline.