Rose­marie Sant

The coun­try's un­em­ploy­ment rate has in­creased again. The lat­est da­ta from the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) in­di­cates that the un­em­ploy­ment rate in­creased from 3.8 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2016 to 4.4 per cent in the sec­ond quar­ter–April to June 2016.

A year ago the rate was 4.4 per cent for the sec­ond quar­ter of 2015.

The CSO said the reg­is­tered labour force at the end of the sec­ond quar­ter was 640,900, a de­crease of 1,000 or 0.2 per cent com­pared to the first quar­ter of 2016.

Ac­cord­ing to the CSO, the da­ta re­flect­ed an in­crease of 4400 or 18.3 per cent in the num­ber of un­em­ployed per­sons in T&T be­tween first quar­ter 2016 and sec­ond quar­ter 2015. Un­em­ployed males in­creased by 1600 or 11.6 per cent, while un­em­ployed fe­males in­creased by 2800 or 27.2 per cent. Al­to­geth­er, up to the end of the sec­ond quar­ter there were 28,500 un­em­ployed per­sons in the coun­try, up from 24,100 in the first quar­ter.

The sur­vey da­ta showed a de­crease of 5,400 or 0.9 per cent in the num­ber of per­sons with jobs, in the quar­ter un­der re­view.

From a gen­der per­spec­tive, the CSO said the num­ber of em­ployed males de­creased by 700 or 0.2 per cent while the num­ber of em­ployed fe­males de­creased by 4,700 or 1.8 per cent.

Com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter a year ear­li­er, the da­ta showed a de­crease of 16200 or 2.6 per cent in the to­tal num­ber of em­ployed per­sons.

More peo­ple lost their jobs in the whole­sale and re­tail trade and in restau­rants and ho­tels but there were in­creas­es in jobs in man­u­fac­tur­ing, trans­port, stor­age and com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Econ­o­mist ques­tions rate

Econ­o­mist In­dera Sage­wan-Al­li said giv­en the num­ber of chal­lenges fac­ing the CSO she is con­cerned about the va­lid­i­ty of the 4.4 per cent un­em­ploy­ment rate.

How­ev­er, she agrees with the trend that "the un­em­ploy­ment rate is ris­ing, giv­en the con­trac­tions in the en­er­gy and con­struc­tion sec­tors, es­pe­cial­ly giv­en that the con­struc­tion sec­tor is a ma­jor em­ploy­er."

Sage­wan-Al­li said: "Cuts by the gov­ern­ment in the num­ber of Cepep con­trac­tors would have al­so been re­flect­ed in the in­crease in un­em­ploy­ment." What was telling, she said, was the "sig­nif­i­cant in­crease in the num­ber of women now un­em­ployed. "When you feed a woman you feed a fam­i­ly, so the so­cial im­pli­ca­tion of that is some­thing which needs to be looked at se­ri­ous­ly," she said.

Sage­wan-Al­li was al­so con­cerned about the fall in the par­tic­i­pa­tion rate from 61 per cent to 60 per cent, which she says in­di­cates that peo­ple who are look­ing for jobs and not find­ing them, so they are drop­ping out of the labour force.

She ex­plained: "To be con­sid­ered un­em­ployed you need to be ac­tive­ly look­ing for work so it could well be that the re­al da­ta is not be­ing cap­tured."

The re­al­i­ty is, she said, that un­em­ploy­ment is in­creas­ing. Gov­ern­ment "needs to look at the in­creas­ing un­em­ploy­ment and put things in place to help cre­ate em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties", she said. "They can't do it be­cause of de­clin­ing rev­enues but they can of­fer in­cen­tives to en­cour­age the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor. They should part­ner with the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor in terms of fil­ter­ing the un­em­ployed in­to those sec­tor."

High­lights of CSO jobs da­ta

�2 Labour force fell from 641,900 to 640,900 a de­crease of 1000 or 0.2 per cent

�2 Labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate fell from 61 per cent to 60 per cent

�2 Per­sons em­ployed fell from 617,800 to 612,400 a de­crease 5400 or 0.9 per cent

�2 The num­ber of un­em­ployed per­sons rose in­crease from 24,100 to 28,500–4400 or 18. 3 per cent

�2 The un­em­ploy­ment rate in­crease from 3.8 per cent to 4.4 per cent.