What's the news?
With 2015 having been a solidly successful year for car sales in Ireland, expectations are now on 2016 to provide bumper sales figures, and the number everyone seems to have settled on is 150,000.
That is a figure which should provide a significant boost to jobs and employment. The car trade in Ireland once employed around 49,000 people, up as late as 2007, but this plummeted to 35,000 in the depths of the recession.
Now, with improved sales prospects, Suzanne Sheridan of employment agency StartMonday says that figure should be back up to 47,750 by the end of this year. "There is increased customer confidence, that is clear from the steady increase in car sales yearonyear, and quite simply, there are more employees needed to meet the demand for new cars. We are currently seeking to fill a number of highprofile positions across the sector and we only see this increasing dramatically over the next 1224 months. We are seeing an influx of returning immigrants seeking to return to the sector from markets such as the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.
"There is a huge demand for technicians in dealerships across the country, with a major skills shortage in this area, however, there is also now a large demand for sales staff, with some candidates expected to earn more than €80,000 in a full year."
According to StartMonday, for every increase of 1,000 new car sales, 130 new jobs are created. Time to dust of the CVs everyone...