While many analysts will point to the decline in the manufacturing sector as evidence that the house of cards that is our employment market is about to tumble, the real benchmark will be a significant drop in the numbers employed in construction. By the first quarter of 2007 there were 282,100 people listed as working in the industry, making it by some distance Ireland's largest employer. A significant percentage of these workers are employed in the labour-intensive residential sector, and with an output of about 90,000 homes last year, the industry could be described as booming. But buoyant predictions for the future have made way for a sort of guarded pessimism, and new home building has been scaled back significantly this year (figures of 25% have been suggested for the decline in the number of new houses being built, with little prospect of better news into the near future). So where can we find the optimism for employment in an industry which appears to be struggling?

"The property market is made up of four pillars, " said Peter Stafford, research and policy development executive with the Construction Industry Federation (CIF).

"These are housing, and the three elements of non-housing . . . commercial, industrial and civil engineering. The housing sector has been extremely large, thanks to the historical shortage of accommodation, and this has made the overall construction sector in Ireland somewhat unusual. What we are seeing is the fact that the supply of housing has been ratcheted up enormously, so it is unlikely that it will remain growing at 2006 levels. But civil engineering and other non-residential building are going up hugely, and, for example, we saw civil engineering work up by 25% last year, with commercial and industrial building up by double figures."

This "rebalancing" of the construction industry is actually making it appear more "normal" (when benchmarked against international norms). But can the sector, in general, maintain the sorts of levels of employment which have been such a factor of Ireland's booming economy over the past decade?

"House building is very labour intensive, so if there is a decline in the numbers of houses being built, there will be a decline in the number of people employed, " said Stafford. "But, because of the growth in the other sectors, the majority of job losses in the residential market can probably by offset by the commercial and industrial sectors."

This is, of course, dependent on the portability of skills between the sectors.

But a plasterer in a house is utilising the same basic skills as a plasterer in an office block, so, perhaps with some retraining, there should be a relatively smooth migration for workers who can no longer find work in the residential sector.

"When you move from houses to office blocks, you are dealing with the same rooms, only bigger, " suggested Stafford. "And we do see quite a lot of movement between the sectors. It has to be remembered that a lot of people working in residential developments would have come from the commercial sector. But the CSO (Central Statistics Office) doesn't break down employment in construction into the different sectors, so a lot of this talk is just speculation."

It is a slightly different situation when it comes to civil engineering, as the skills required for public infrastructure tend to be less portable, and employees tend to be operatives rather than craftspeople. There is still a significant demand for workers (thanks to the new NDP), and, thanks to skills shortages, there will still be a requirement for an influx of foreign workers. There are also significant skills shortages at the design end of all sectors of construction . . . and this is good news for any qualified professionals looking to secure work in design.

Indeed, Sigmar Recruitment, whose construction division deals mainly across such areas as architecture, engineering and town planning, has witnessed some significant growth in recruitment over the past year - with a 40% increase in recruitment demand over the last 6 months.

"Similar to IT boom in the mid and late 1990's, the demand for high quality candidates in the industry is far out weighing the supply, " said Jennie Nolan, Construction Recruitment Consultant at Sigmar. "Going from the market trends over the past couple of years, taking the country's current strong economic position into consideration and also the indication from a healthy three quarters of the construction, engineering and architectural companies that Sigmar Recruitment has dealt with in the past couple of years, we do expect the increase in the level of recruitment to continue throughout 2007 and beyond."

In a recent report by Sigmar Recruitment, over 90% of international construction companies believe that construction is going to continue to go from strength to strength with the majority of them saying that they are planning for the bulk of their business to come from nonresidential projects in the next couple of years in strong contrast to the past couple of years. Thus, recruitment is expected to stay as buoyant with more jobs than candidates as the construction industry continues to grow in 2007.

Indeed, in a report on the Irish economy, Davy Stockbrokers says that 35,000 jobs will be lost in the construction sector by the end of 2008.

"However, it also says the losses will be offset by 15,000 new jobs in building of infrastructure and commercial property developments and it predicts economic growth will remain strong, " said Nolan. "It is our intention to facilitate this growth for our clients."