Peter Espeut | Is Jamaica nearing full employment?

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics”. This pithy adage is attributed to the American author Mark Twain, who himself attributed it to British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli.

When fresh out of sixth form I went to The University of the West Indies in 1970 to study chemistry, a survey course all students from all faculties had to take called “use of English”. I enjoyed it thoroughly! It taught creative writing and clear thinking, including the principles of logic, one of the important components of philosophy.

One of the set books for that course was How to Lie with Statistics by American journalist Darrell Huff. The book is about how numbers can be manipulated to trick people into making false conclusions, and how to spot when you are being fed a bill of goods.

Last week (August 15) the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) released the results of the April 2023 Labour Force Survey which reports further reduction in Jamaica’s unemployment rate to a record low 4.5 per cent – 1.5 percentage points lower than the figure for the corresponding period in 2022.

Responding to this, last Wednesday (August 16) Prime Minister Holness described the announcement as “great news”, and said this means that “we are now close to full employment” (JIS, August 16).

How close to reality is all this?

One of the first things you learn in the interpretation of data is to check the definitions of terms. In the notes provided by STATIN which accompany the Labour Force Survey, we learn that the labour force is “All persons who were employed in any form of economic activity (to be defined later) for one hour or more during survey week”.

Really?

STATIN considers someone to be “employed” if he works only one hour in the 40-hour workweek. In the April 2023 Labour Force Survey, STATIN reports that “the number of employed persons increased by 43,300 to 1,312,600” (JIS). Nowhere do they report the number of hours worked weekly by their sample, and so we are left to speculate how many of the 1.3 million employed Jamaicans work 40 hours weekly, or only one hour each week.

But clearly, with this definition of being employed, we cannot conclude – by any stretch of the imagination – that Jamaica’s employed labour force is fully employed.

FULL TRUTH?

In days gone by, STATIN distinguished between Jamaicans who were “employed” and those who were “underemployed”. No longer! If you work 60 minutes or 120 minutes or 180 minutes per week you are “employed”. Is this the full truth? Now we can understand what Prime Minister Disraeli was talking about!

And so the April 2023 Labour Force Survey reports that only 61,300 Jamaicans are “unemployed”, but it also reports that 725,700 Jamaicans are “outside the labour force”. This is another matter of definition. To be considered “employed” or “unemployed” you have to first be considered “in the labour force”. Of the two million or so of us Jamaicans 14 years old and over, 725,000 are not in the labour force. What does this mean? Does this large figure hide some persons who should really be called “unemployed”?

Obviously, this figure includes students, the aged and the infirm who are clearly not in the labour force, but there is a large number of others, which is where the “definitions” trip in.

If you are not working, and have not looked for work during the previous month, you are dropped from the labour force. It used to be three months, but STATIN changed the definition in the 1980s, and the labour force immediately shrunk, and the employment rate increased overnight.

And so, if you previously looked for work – you registered with an employment agency, you wrote job application letters, you asked your friends and church brothers and sisters to look work for you, you visited job sites in search of a job – without result, and so you stopped looking during the survey week, you are dropped from the labour force, and don’t get a chance to be deemed “unemployed”.

STATIN states that a person is included in the labour force (as “unemployed”) if they did not look for work during the survey week, but nevertheless were ready, willing and able to work if offered a job. Good luck in measuring that!

IDLE PEOPLE

As I drive during the workweek through the areas in which I serve as a clergyman – Hannah Town, Denham Town, Jones Town, Trench Town, Tivoli Gardens, Rose Town, Greenwich Town, etc. – a constant feature is large numbers of idle people on the street. Maybe some of them work one hour each week and are categorised as “employed”; or maybe they are classified “out of the labour force”. It is hard for me to accept that Jamaica is nearing full employment.

The fact is that labour force statistics have propaganda value, and can be manipulated and “interpreted” to suit political agendas. Of course, there is also the possibility that the politicians do not understand the data that they are quoting and “interpreting”.

How credible is this? Are we being intentionally misled?

The politician-friendly media help this propaganda agenda with superficial analysis. Surely, economic journalists are trained to understand labour force statistics?

Jamaica’s economy cannot grow, and poverty will not be reduced, if large numbers of employable age are excluded from the labour force; those not working are supported by those who do. Too many unemployed men I know are of limited literacy skills. Our failing education system fails not only our citizens, but also dampens Jamaica’s economic prospects.

Our population is growing so slowly, we are told that Jamaica may soon have to import even unskilled labour. I suppose this is only to be expected if we lose thousands to migration, and abort 22,000 babies annually. Population policy and education policy are supposed to feed into economic policy. Jamaica will be condemned to low growth and continuing poverty without a growing population and an educated labour force.

Peter Espeut is a sociologist and development scientist. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com