Religious Discrimination and Disadvantage in the Northern Ireland Labour Market

Accusations of religious discrimination in employment in Northern Ireland have long been made and have included both the public and private sectors. In view of the volume and persistance of the accusations it is perhaps surprising that until recently no large scale objective research has been reported, either on the scale of religious discrimination in the Northern Ireland labour market or on the prevailing patterns in employment and occupations by religion. The aim of this paper is briefly to mention the most significant of the previous assessments of patterns in employment, to examine in some detail the patterns prevailing in employment from data contained in the 1971 Northern Ireland population census and finally briefly to discuss the role of discrimination and other factors in generating these patterns.