T&T record­ed the low­est un­em­ploy­ment rate in the coun­try's his­to­ry in the first quar­ter of 2013 when the rate fell from 4.7 per cent to 3.7 per cent.This is ac­cord­ing to da­ta in the lat­est Labour Force bul­letin from he Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice col­lect­ed in the Con­tin­u­ous Sam­ple Sur­vey of Pop­u­la­tion con­duct­ed be­tween Jan­u­ary- March 2013.The CSO re­port­ed that the un­em­ploy­ment rate for fe­males de­creased from 6.6 per cent to 4.7 per cent, while un­em­ploy­ment rate for males de­creased from 4.6 per cent to 3 per cent.

Com­pared to the same quar­ter a year ear­li­er the over­all un­em­ploy­ment rate fell from 5.4 per cent to 3.7 per cent.

This de­cline in the un­em­ploy­ment rate were re­port­ed in spe­cif­ic in­dus­tries in­clud­ing, fi­nanc­ing, in­sur­ance, re­al es­tate and busi­ness ser­vices, whole­sale and re­tail trade, restau­rants and ho­tels and trans­port, stor­age and com­mu­ni­ca­tion."The labour force of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go reg­is­tered 635,100 per­sons at the end of the first quar­ter 2013," the CSO said."This rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of 5,400 or 0.8 per cent when com­pared to the Fourth Quar­ter 2012.

From a gen­der per­spec­tive, this in­crease in the labour force was re­flect­ed among males which rose by 0.1 per cent and fe­males which in­creased by 1.9 per cent when com­pared with the pre­vi­ous quar­ter.When com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter in 2012, the over­all labour force for the 1st Quar­ter 2013 re­vealed an in­crease of 11,600 or 1.9 per cent." The over­all labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate rose from 61.7 per cent in the fourth quar­ter 2012 to 61.9 per cent in the first quar­ter 2013.

The labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate for males fell to 72.4 per cent while the labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate for fe­males in­creased to 51.5 per cent. When com­pared with the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter of 2012, the over­all labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate in­creased from 61.8 per cent to 61.9 per cent.The sur­vey da­ta showed an in­crease of 11,500 or 1.9 per cent in the num­ber of per­sons with jobs, in the quar­ter un­der re­view.

From a gen­der per­spec­tive, the num­ber of em­ployed males rose by 4,000 or 1.1 per cent while the num­ber of em­ployed fe­males in­creased by 7,500 or 3 per cent.When com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter a year ear­li­er, the da­ta showed that the to­tal num­ber of per­sons em­ployed in T&T in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly by 22,100 or 3.7 per cent.The Labour Force Bul­letin is avail­able at www.cso.plan­ning.gov.tt.