T&T's to­tal labour force for the sec­ond quar­ter of 2012 was 627,300 per­sons, an in­crease of 0.6 per cent over the 623,500 record­ed the pre­vi­ous quar­ter.Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est Labour Bul­letin from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO), num­ber of fe­males in the labour force in­creased by 1.2 per cent be­tween the first quar­ter of 2012 and the sec­ond quar­ter of 2012, mov­ing from 260,900 per­sons to 264,000 per­sons.

The num­ber of males in­creased by 0.2 per cent or 700 per­sons, mov­ing from 362,600 to 363,300. The con­tri­bu­tion by males to the to­tal labour force con­tin­ues to be larg­er than fe­males with males com­pris­ing 57.9 per cent, a de­cline from the 58.2 per cent in the pre­vi­ous quar­ter.

An analy­sis of changes in the labour force re­vealed that sig­nif­i­cant pos­i­tive con­tri­bu­tions to the size of the labour force came from trans­port, stor­age and com­mu­ni­ca­tion where the labour force in­creased by 10.2 per cent from 41,000 to 45,200 per­son. Com­mu­ni­ty, so­cial and per­son­al ser­vices showed an in­crease of 3.7 per cent mov­ing from 205,100 to 212,600 per­sons.

The to­tal num­ber of per­sons un­em­ployed in the quar­ter was 30,500–a 9.8 per cent de­crease from the pre­vi­ous quar­ter when the to­tal num­ber of per­sons un­em­ployed was 33,800. This, to­geth­er with a slight in­crease in the labour force meant that the un­em­ploy­ment rate fell from 5.4 per cent to 4.9 per cent.To­tal num­bers un­em­ployed in the con­struc­tion in­dus­try de­creased from 12,200 to 8,800, with the as­so­ci­at­ed un­em­ploy­ment rate falling from 11.8 per cent to 8.7 per cent.

An­oth­er in­dus­tri­al group which in­curred a sig­nif­i­cant de­crease in the to­tal num­ber un­em­ployed was whole­sale and re­tail trade, restau­rants and ho­tels where there was a de­crease 6,700 to 5,300. As a re­sult, the un­em­ploy­ment rate for that in­dus­try group fell from 5.8 per cent to 4.7 per cent.