A Beveridge curve plots unemployment against vacancies. It moves along itself with the business cycle (recession pushes points bottom-right, recovery pulls them top-left) and shifts when the matching efficiency of the labour market changes.
We map every quarter of the Irish labour market onto Barden’s own Beveridge Curve. This year, for the first time, it has stopped moving in a direction.
Unemployment has sat between 3.2 and 4.2 per cent since early 2023, which is about as close to full employment as the CSO measure gets. Hiring demand, going by the CSO job vacancy rate, has cooled to close to a third below where it was in the 2021 and 2022 boom. The market is tight, but the heat has come out of it.
What caught my eye is the shape of the movement this year. Over the last four quarters, the curve has travelled a long, looping path and ended up almost exactly where it started. A lot of motion, no destination.
“The market is busier than it looks and going nowhere.”
In my experience, that pattern is not weakness, it is hesitation. Organisations are not letting people go, unemployment has not moved. Firms are opening roles and then holding off before they commit to a permanent appointment.
AI is the most likely reason. Many organisations are waiting to see how the tools land before they hire, what efficiency they actually gain, and what they want their people doing with the time it frees up.
The firms further along are already redesigning how the work gets done, and wrestling with what they want more of, and less of, from their teams. When you are not sure what skills you will need in eighteen months, it is very hard to commit to a permanent appointment today. The wider global picture is giving nobody a reason to lean in either.
There is a more hopeful read in this, though. Held-back demand is not lost demand. When the AI picture clears, and the world settles a little, those deferred appointments could release together, and the curve could pick a direction quickly.
That is what it looks like from where we sit. If your team is hesitating on permanent hiring right now, I would genuinely like to know what is driving it.
Source: Barden quarterly Beveridge curve, private/professional sector (excludes public sector and related entities). Cross-referenced with CSO Labour Force Survey Q1 2026 (released 21 May 2026), AIB / S&P Global Ireland PMI releases, and commentary from Bank of Ireland and Deloitte Ireland.
If you have a request and would like real-time information to inform your hiring decisions, contact Ed Heffernan at ed.heffernan@dev.barden.ie or Elaine Brady at elaine.brady@dev.barden.ie
