Employers in Ireland are increasingly seeking to hire migrant workers by stating ‘English not required’ in job listings, research from jobs website Indeed.
The study shows that 2.4% of job postings in Ireland, the majority for lower paid roles, now explicitly state that applicants are not required to speak proficient English.
The proportion of roles not requiring English was highest in the cleaning & sanitation category (10.7%) followed by beauty & wellness (8%) and construction (7.2%).
Driving (4.1%), food preparation & service (3.2%) and hospitality & tourism (2.8%) all had an above-average proportion of job not requiring English listed.
However, typically better paid categories in which employers are struggling to recruit staff such as electrical engineering (4.4%) and production & manufacturing (4.3%) also feature in the top 10.
Jobs in both of those categories and construction are included on the government’s ‘critical jobs list’, which allows workers to apply for critical skills employment permits for roles where there is a shortage of qualifications, experience or skills.
“Language requirement shares reflect deep trends in labour markets that are important to understanding migration,” said Jack Kennedy, senior economist at Indeed.
“Employers in Ireland may be using flexibility with English language skills as a signal for their willingness to hire foreign workers.”
“Unemployment in Ireland has been below 5% since February 2022 and finding staff, particularly in certain categories including those with low-paid roles, can be difficult for employers.
“In cases where it is possible for an employee to do a job well without having a proficiency in English, being flexible on language requirements may assist with recruitment given the relatively low number of such job postings.”
Ireland lags behind other European countries in terms of willingness among employers to hire workers without local language skills.
The Netherlands has the largest share of postings that do not require knowledge of Dutch (7.8%), followed by Spain, where 5.8% of listings do not require Spanish.
For Italy and France, the share of their respective main official languages is around 4%, while Germany is at 2.7%. The UK is also at 2.7%.
The research shows that typically higher paid and people-facing jobs are the most stringent about requiring English.
There are no ‘English not required’ listings in legal and mathematics, and just 0.3% of listings have flexible language requirements in pharmacy, human resources and project management.
Jobs in many of these categories are included in the government’s Ineligible list of occupations for employment permits.
They also include requirements for a high level of qualifications increasing the expectation and likelihood that foreign candidates will have an ability to speak English.
“Migrants moving to Ireland to work with limited English are likely to be able to learn more of the language as they work and live in the country,” said Kennedy.
“At the same time, they are helping to ensure there are thriving workforces in sectors that require foreign workers to meet demand.
“In future years, generative artificial intelligence tools that demonstrate strong language and translation abilities may enable more non-native-language speakers to contribute more productively in more roles.”
Indeed began prompting employers to say whether their open roles required knowledge of the country’s primary language following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022.
Fennell Photography 2022
Of the 2.7m people working in Ireland, around 500,000 or a fifth are non-Irish citizens, according to the Department of the Taoiseach.
As of 2023, there were 27,500 migrant workers in Ireland’s construction sector, an increase of 84% or 12,600 workers since 2021. Over 82,000 migrants work in food and accommodation services.
Photo: Jack Kennedy. (Pic: Fennell Photography)