EDITORIAL - Gangs of Gordon House must focus on jobs

Among the great failures of the gangs of Gordon House - the political parties that have alternated in running Jamaica - is their inability to generate economic growth and create jobs.

Indeed, under the stewardship of the current lot, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), this country is into its 14th consecutive quarter of negative growth, even though the rest of the world has long emerged from recession. For the fiscal year just begun, domestic output will increase, in real terms, by hardly more than one per cent.

Growth, if it happens, will mirror the rate of the last quarter century, for most of which Jamaica's affairs were presided over by the other of the venerable gangs, the People's National Party (PNP).

With such a poor economic performance, it is small wonder that official unemployment hovers around 12 per cent, but is believed to be severely undercounted; that large swathes of the population are in marginal jobs; and that poverty is pushing past 20 per cent, more than doubling the rate of four years ago.

The problem is particularly acute among the youth (15-29) - 59 per cent, or approximately 400,000, of whom, based on 2009 data, are either unemployed or out of the labour force altogether. Of those who stopped looking for work, 83 per cent believed there was none to be found.

We have, in the recent past, quoted these figures, warning that they suggest a social demographic that, in several respects, parallels those of some of the North African and Middle East countries where young people have led uprisings against authoritarian regimes. We repeat them now against the backdrop of the government White Paper on plans to increase the powers of the central bank to give it responsibility for the stability of the financial sector.

Matter of great urgency

Financial-sector stability, this newspaper accepts, is critical to macroeconomic stability. A designated policeman - in this case a Financial Stability Committee - is important.

But in the context of Jamaica, a matter of greater urgency must be growing the economy and creating jobs, lest the current ruling gang believe the country is immune to the upheavals of North Africa and the Middle East. The Golding administration, spawned by the JLP, does not exude a sense of urgency about the creation of jobs.

In this regard, we commend to Prime Minister Bruce Golding a perspective from Mr Barack Obama, the president of the United States of America, the world's largest economy, to which Jamaica looks for substantial aid.

America is recovering from the global meltdown of 2007-2008. But Mr Obama reckons that it is not growing fast enough or creating sufficient jobs to replace those lost during the recession.

In January, Mr Obama established a Council on Jobs, chaired by Mr Jeffrey Imelda, the CEO of General Electric Corporation. A predecessor advisory board on economic stabilisation and recovery had gone as far as it could.

We do not suggest that oversight of macroeconomic stability and job creation are mutually exclusive, but the gangs of Gordon House tend to misplace their priorities. Moreover, their notions of job creation tend to be those that they hand out as largesse, mostly to adherents of the cult.

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