Posted online: May 7th, 2009

A new report has shown that there are almost 10,000 people employed in the town of Letterkenny, confirming its importance as a source of employment in Co Donegal.
4,441 people lived and worked in the Cathedral Town while a further 5,393 lived elsewhere but travelled to the town to work, according to the report from the Central Statistics Office.
A further 1,778 Letterkenny residents worked outside the town.
The biggest area of employment was the health sector which employed 24% of the people working in the town. The next biggest employer was the wholesale and retail sector which supplied 19% of the jobs in town.
Letterkenny residents who travelled outside of the town to work were employed in a variety of sectors but almost 19% of them were employed in the education sector.
The working population of Letterkenny is a highly educated one with 43% having a third level qualification as opposed the national figure of 33% for towns with a population of 5,000 or more. Less than 6% of employees had not progressed beyond primary school. Approximately 7% of workers were still in education.
The vast majority of Letterkenny workers used a car to commute to work, with 83% driving to and from their place of work. Letterkenny cyclists seem to be a rare commodity with just 23 people using a bicycle to travel to work.
Most workers in the town lived relatively close to their place of employment with 45% of workers taking less than 15 minutes to get to work.