Peter Espeut | Interpreting the labour force data

I am sure many Jamaicans were surprised to hear that the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) has determined that Jamaica’s unemployment rate in January 2022 fell to 6.2 per cent – the lowest in many years. In October 2020, for example, it was 10.7 per cent. This decrease has been the cause of some political backslapping and self-congratulation.

But the STATIN finding flies in the face of casual observation and intuition. The churches I administer are in the Hannah Town/Denham Town and Greenwich Town areas, and I also work out of offices in Papine and Liguanea; the numbers of young men and women I observe hanging out on street corners does not appear to have declined; neither has the number who approach us to find jobs for them.

Yet the numbers who approach us for food and money for medication have increased, as have the mendicants at street lights and food outlets. And the higglers and fish vendors claim that sales are slow. More people employed is supposed to mean less hunger and more money to spend. The STATIN findings need to be explored.

Let us look at some definitions. If you work for one hour each week you are counted as “employed”. Years ago, STATIN had a category called “underemployed”, which was useful because you could get a better idea of the adequacy of the employment from the labour force data; nowadays, “employed” can mean anything from a full-time job in a bank, to one morning each week helping a fisherman draw his pots, to picking mangoes off someone’s tree and selling them. I do not believe that the way the term “employed” is now being used is meaningful.

EMPLOYED AND UNDEREMPLOYED

We need to return to the distinction between “employed” and “underemployed” so that we can get a better picture of what is going on in the labour market.

Before you can be counted as “unemployed”, you have to be placed “in the labour force”; and if you are not working, to be counted “in the labour force” you have to be ready, willing and able to work, and you have to have to have actively looked for work over the last month. If a jobseeker becomes frustrated, and ceases looking for work for one month – e.g., writing job applications and sending out resumes – that person falls “outside the labour force” and does not get a chance to be counted as “unemployed”.

According to STATIN the “job-seeking rate” has fallen from 6.6 per cent in October 2020 to 3.9 per cent in January 2022. This should lead to a decline in the size of the labour force. Yet over the period under consideration, as the population of Jamaica has steadily increased, so has the labour force, and the number of employed persons in the labour force. The number of persons considered “unemployed” has steadily declined, as has the number considered “outside the labour force”. This inconsistency has not been properly explained.

At the same time, we know otherwise that the number of jobs in the construction sector has increased, and a number of children registered in school cannot be accounted for (about 120,000 according to government data; it could be more); presumably they are working. A few of my young people at church have dropped out of school and are employed or doing odd jobs.

So, some of the recent increase in the labour force is due to some young people prematurely leaving school (i.e. before gaining any certification).

We do not have any data on whether recruitment into gangs is increasing. I worry about at least one of my young people.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, all things are not equal, and I am not sure this recent STATIN finding compared to data from previous years shows a recovering healthy economy.

In the meantime, the prime minister has announced that Jamaica has a shortage of skilled tradesmen, and may have to import labour to work in, for example, the construction boom we are alleged to be experiencing. We know that we already import many Chinese labourers (to work on Chinese-funded construction projects), and many workers in the tourism industry (especially in foreign-owned hotels).

SICK SOCIETY

Jamaica has one of the largest wealth gaps in the world – a sign of a sick society. Salaries (and benefits) at the top are higher than elsewhere (e.g. the governor of the Bank of Jamaica is paid more than the chairman of the US Federal Reserve) while wages at the bottom are lower than elsewhere in the world. Jamaican skilled labour migrates to British colonies like the Cayman Islands and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Which skilled workers would wish to migrate here? Are we going to pay them more than Jamaicans?

According to STATIN, in January 2022 more than three-quarters of a million Jamaicans 14 years and over (by calculation 754,632) fall “outside the labour force” – fully 36 per cent of the Jamaican population in that age cohort. We well know of the failures in our broken education system, and in the HEART programme which fails to provide training and certification even to those who enrol, despite receiving billions in funding. High illiteracy rates and inadequate socialisation create school and labour force dropouts.

Can’t we declare a national crisis in education and pull together to solve this so-far intractable problem? The Government has proved it cannot deliver quality education and training. Can the churches – which operate by far the best schools in Jamaica – be asked to do more?

Maybe importing skilled labour (from Haiti? Cuba? The Dominican Republic?) is a necessary short-term strategy; but surely our sustainable future depends upon implementing the recommendations of the Patterson Commission on Education Transformation?

The Rev Peter Espeut is a development scientist who is Dean of Studies at St Michael’s Theological College. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com