‘Difficult choices’ led to record-low unemployment, says Morris Dixon
Morris Dixon ecstatic over record-low unemployment figures
Published:Thursday | February 1, 2024 | 12:11 AM
When Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon, minister with responsibility for digital and skills transformation, heard that Jamaica hit a new record-low unemployment rate of 4.2 per cent in October 2023, she rejoiced.
Making the announcement on Tuesday, Carol Coy, director of the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN), also advised that the October 2023 Labour Force Survey findings were compared with the October 2021 survey results to indicate the changes that have occurred.
The new record low of 4.2 per cent in October came down from 4.5 per cent in both April and July 2023.
When Morris Dixon, the minister with one of the newest portfolios on the block associated with employment, addressed the launch of Ikonwork at the AC Hotel by Marriott on Tuesday – the evening of the announcement – she expressed her joy.
She said the improvement in the numbers took hard thought, was not done overnight, but instead, with difficult choices being made.
“Those difficult choices have led us to this moment where we can see that kind of economic data that says that we’ve been able to [get] many things right. Yes, we have problems, but I think we are going – I know we are going – in the right direction,” Morris Dixon said.
With her former educator in the room, Dr Damien King, senior lecturer and head of the Department of Economics at the Mona campus of The University of the West Indies, she recalled envisioning Jamaica reaching a point where it would hit an all-time low in its unemployment rate.
“I never thought I would be able to read numbers like that. We were always talking about unemployment being high. We were talking about our debt-to-GDP being out of control, ratio being out of control. We were talking about us not exporting enough and our exports going in the wrong direction. We were talking about so many negative things about our economy, that oftentimes as a young student at UWI, I thought, ‘Is there any way out?’ But we have found a way out, and it took a lot of hard work,” Morris Dixon said.
“It took hard work of some of our parliamentarians here. It also took a lot of hard work across the island. It was not just one administration. It was several administrations who worked really hard to get us to this point, and also the private sector who worked really hard, and so today when you see that 4.2 per cent, it is an opportunity for all of us to celebrate,” she said.