The tech downturn is pivoting Ireland’s employment market away from Dublin, as a fresh wave of Meta layoffs have been countered by buoyant job news outside the capital.

Facebook-owner Meta’s announcement that nearly 500 staff in Ireland will be laid off means tech redundancies in the country have hit close to 3,000 and have added to the gloom enveloping Dublin’s commercial real estate market.

The Central Bank previously estimated that tech layoffs in Ireland had reached 2,300.

However, beyond the tech sector, new government job figures showed employment had actually jumped 4.1% in the 12 months to Q1 2023 to reach 2.6 million and the number of new jobs announced since the start of May has reached over 3,500.

Highlights include Boston Scientific announcing an €80M expansion of its manufacturing plant in Clonmel.

Boston Scientific expects its investment to create more than 400 jobs in the coming years, with an increase in both office and manufacturing space planned in Clonmel.

It currently employs around 6,500 people across its sites in Clonmel, Galway and Cork.

U.S. computer chip firm Analog Devices has announced that it will create 600 new roles as part of a €630M investment at its European headquarters in Limerick.

Meanwhile the largest jobs creation announcement came from U.S. firm Dexcom, which will build a manufacturing facility in Athenry, County Galway, creating up to 1,000 jobs in the region.

Bolstering these announcements, on 26 May H&MV Engineering, a specialist in high voltage electrical engineering, pledged to create 700 jobs over the next five years at its new global headquarters in Castletroy, County Limerick.

The new Limerick facility will include 36K SF of office space and will serve as a major centre for the global business.

The number of new jobs in May is significantly above the 1,280 announced by the IDA in April and 470 new roles created in March.

But that may be scant consolation for the Dublin office market.

Meta’s latest round of cuts is one of the largest made by one of the digital giants since the start of the global slowdown in the sector, which began in late 2022.

This wave of redundancies is set to shrink Meta’s Irish workforce to just over 2,000 after the company previously cut 300 Irish jobs last November during its first round of layoffs.

A further 70 Irish staff have been made redundant since then and the latest announcement means the U.S.-based company will have shed almost a third of its Irish staff.