Analogies to bigger countries are often pretty much vacuous, just like they were when the neo-libs were singing the praises.

Comparison by total population isn't the point of my comment. The point of my comment is comparison, if any, to structure, or composition, of the labor force and perforce domestic demand for certain skills. The so-called service sector is non-farm and non-manufacturer. Now, the types of occupations that comprise the service sector have varied over time, for example, to exclude "gardeners" but include "landscapers", real estate agents and customer service reps as well as "independent software vendors" (ISVs). In any case and as a matter of asset production, such employment classes are not coupled to durable assets and are historically speaking extremely vulnerable to substitution effects, ergo unemployment and prevailing (non-unionized) wage competition, in both B2B supply chains and consumer DI markets.

Now, the welfare costs, if any, to the state is a function of the size and composition of the labor force. Of course, the cost would be greater in the US than in Ireland simply because of the population differential. So that is an uninteresting observation.

The truly interesting hypothesis of cost and unemployment rates depend on composition characteristics.

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.