EDITORIAL - A crisis of jobs

There was, in Gary 'Butch' Hendrickson's recent remarks, both exasperation and resignation.

He was resigned to the seeming atrophy of our Government and desperate for something to happen to lift Jamaica out of its socio-economic crisis.

So, Mr Hendrickson, a successful entrepreneur who believes that manufacturing can, and should, play a critical role in the island's economy, urged his peers in the private sector to bypass the Government and get on with things.

"We cannot continue to wait for the bureaucrats to move," Mr Hendrickson, the chairman of Continental Baking Company, said in a speech to the Rotary Club of Kingston. "If we have to, we must move them out of the way."

A week earlier, Mark Kerr-Jarrett, the Montego Bay-based businessman, made a case to the same audience for the potential of information and communication technology, and business process outsourcing, to drive growth.

Mr Kerr-Jarrett appealed to the Government to energise investment in these sectors.

"We must have the active support and participation of the Government of Jamaica," Mr Kerr-Jarrett said.

Classic debate

This appears, at first glance, to be the classic debate about the route to development in countries such as ours - manufacturing or services, and the role of government.

Their underlying arguments, however, are not fundamentally different. Nor are their concerns different from those highlighted in recent op-ed pieces in this newspaper by the social anthropologist, Professor Don Robotham, which is the same issue about which we have campaigned for several months - the need to do things to create jobs.

We put the case last week in the context of the uprising in Egypt against Hosni Mubarak's near 30-year regime, the ouster of Tunisia's Zine el Abidine Ben Ali and the unrest in other Arab countries.

While the immediate aim is democratic reform, that masks deeper social and economic issues, particularly joblessness and a sense of drift among young people.

Or, as Mr Hendrickson aptly remarked about Jamaica: "We cannot continue to lose generation after generation of Jamaicans because of the inabi-lity to create prosperity and wealth for our people."

No easy fix

Professor Robotham highlighted just how badly Jamaica is losing its young people. In 2009, nearly 60 per cent - just under 400,000 - Jamaican youth in the 15-29 age group, he noted, were "either outright unemployed or not in the labour force". Of this cohort, more than 80 per cent, or about half of the youth population, had opted out of the labour force altogether. Of those who remained in the labour force and were looking for jobs, approximately 20 per cent were unemployed.

Such problems are not easy to fix, but they start with a good economy creating jobs. That benefits from a policy environment that is conducive to investment.

It helps if the Government is aware and ready to engage the private sector, as US President Barack Obama has signalled with his recent naming of General Electric's CEO Jeffrey Immelt to lead a commission on job creation and competition in the US economy.

Our crisis, this newspaper believes, is deeper than America's, and demands urgent attention. It would make sense for our administration to watch Egypt, look at Mr Obama's initiative, and listen to people like Mr Hendrickson and Mr Kerr-Jarrett.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.