Overall, the Irish economy is quite impressive. As a member of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Ireland's economic credentials certainly embody the OECD's mission to promote the economic and social well-being of people around the world through policy implementation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on 'Why violent video games should not be banned'? Get the original essay Ireland is a well-oiled economic machine with a current unemployment rate of 5.9 percent, lower than the European average about 8.5 percent. Ireland's current employment rate is 68.4 percent, which is slightly higher than the OECD average. The average salary in Ireland is approximately US$47.7 thousand, which ranks Ireland 11th in the world, between Australia and Canada. Nationally, Ireland's inflation is 0.34 percent, which is one of the lowest in the world. Gross domestic product (GDP) is the typical indicator used in the national economic scene to determine the total value of goods and services produced in a country's economy over time. Ireland reached a record GDP of US$333.73 billion in 2017. According to the Irish Central Statistics Office (CSO), its GDP increased by 2.5% in the second quarter of 2018 to reach US$75,304 Americans per capita. This figure becomes quite impressive when you consider that it represents a 9% increase in real GDP compared to the second quarter of 2017. Ireland's strong GDP places it ahead of the United States and all other countries, The exception of Luxembourg, per inhabitant. Irish GDP, personal consumption, net exports and government spending increased over the past financial year, but capital investment did not. In fact, it saw a decline of 3.7 percent. Comparing the figures for the second quarter of 2017 with those of the second quarter of 2018, the following sectors experienced positive growth: information and communication, construction (11.5 percent), distribution, transport, hospitality and catering (7.6 percent respectively), financial and insurance activities. While Ireland's GDP is impressive on paper, a few imperatives shed a different light on its reality. The most significant problem identified by the Department of Finance is that Ireland's GDP is growing exponentially (26% in 2015) because much of its income comes from foreign assets based in Ireland. This figure is misleading because the revenue actually goes to non-Irish residents. This is a direct consequence of Irish corporation tax laws which will be discussed in more detail later in this note. As a result, Ireland's GDP represented a larger overall economy that illustrated economic trends that were not as beneficial to the Irish government in the form of taxes or to its citizens in the form of revenue. In 2017, the Irish CSO published a modified version of GDP, now called modified gross national income (GNI). This new GNI did not include retained profits of companies re-domiciled in Ireland, depreciation of foreign intellectual property assets located in Ireland and depreciation of aircraft owned by leasing companies. After recalculating the 2017 GDP data, the CSO published that the modified nominal GNI was €190.2 billion, a third less than its nominal GDP of €289.1 billion. Recent years have seen a widening of the gap, mainly due to the fact that multinational companies have moved their headquarters to.