Saman­tha was sup­posed to start a new job on Mon­day March 30.

“I was ex­cit­ed. I was turn­ing a new page in my life and I was very hope­ful about what was to come,” Saman­tha, 35, told Guardian Me­dia.

Af­ter work­ing at the same job for the past five years Saman­tha felt this move was a pos­i­tive step to­wards her goal of pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment.

“It’s not that I did not like my old job or any­thing, I just felt it was time to move on to some­thing new,” she said.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly for Saman­tha on March 27, mere days be­fore she was set to be­gin a new work life, Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young pro­vid­ed a list of com­pa­nies that were deemed es­sen­tial dur­ing this time of COVID-19.

Her job and the new or­gan­i­sa­tion were not list­ed among them.

“I was sup­posed to go in­to the of­fice and sign my con­tract the day the stay-at-home or­ders came in­to ef­fect,” Saman­tha said.

More than a month lat­er and Saman­tha says she still has not heard from the com­pa­ny.

“I do not know what is go­ing on. My life is in com­plete lim­bo,” she said.

And giv­en the phased re­open­ing of busi­ness­es an­nounced by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Sat­ur­day, it is un­like­ly Saman­tha will hear any good news any time soon.

The com­pa­ny that she was ex­pect­ed to be work­ing, for now, falls un­der Phase Three of the planned re­open­ing.

“So I’m here back at square one look­ing for a job again,” she said.

She is not alone as the eco­nom­ic mea­sures tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment to help stop the spread of the COVID-19 in T&T has left thou­sands job­less.

Re­cruit­ment plat­form Caribbean­Jobs.com says it has seen a 68 per cent in­crease in the num­ber of ap­pli­ca­tions for jobs on its web­site be­tween March and April.

Caribbean­Jobs.com boasts of over a quar­ter-mil­lion users of its web­site every month.

“This spike shows that more job­seek­ers are ap­ply­ing to the jobs cur­rent­ly avail­able on site,” an emailed re­sponse from Lerielle Cole-Pierre, the re­gion­al mar­ket­ing man­ag­er of Caribbean­Jobs.com to Guardian Me­dia stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the da­ta from Caribbean­Jobs.com the most pop­u­lar jobs peo­ple are search­ing for com­ing out of COVID-19 are sales, web de­vel­op­ers, cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty spe­cial­ist, project man­ag­er, health and safe­ty of­fi­cers, on­line mar­kets/con­tent cre­ators, ed­u­ca­tion spe­cial­ists, ad­min­is­tra­tive as­sis­tants and coun­sel­lors (con­sul­tant).

Caribbean­Jobs.com states that it is utilised by more than 900 busi­ness­es through­out the re­gion.

“Nat­u­ral­ly, the need for em­ploy­ers hir­ing staff has de­creased due to the pan­dem­ic. There are, how­ev­er, high­er de­mand in in­dus­tries such as IT, health­care, de­liv­ery, fi­nance, jan­i­to­r­i­al & clean­ing ser­vices, and ed­u­ca­tion,” Caribbean­Jobs.com stat­ed.

Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce based on the num­ber of busi­ness­es that have been closed since the stay at home or­ders were an­nounced the coun­try’s un­em­ploy­ment fig­ure is cur­rent­ly over 100,000 and could es­ca­late.

The Cham­ber ar­gued that the gov­ern­ment’s risk-averse ap­proach to the sit­u­a­tion would re­sult in in­creased un­em­ploy­ment, so­cial ten­sion, in­creased crime and fur­ther stress up­on an al­ready frag­ile econ­o­my.

“We be­lieve the most vul­ner­a­ble busi­ness­es would be the mi­cro and small en­ter­pris­es with an­nu­al sales of un­der $10 mil­lion which have seen sales de­cline by 25 per cent or more over the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od end­ing April this year,” it stat­ed.

Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Unit Trust Cor­po­ra­tion Nigel Ed­wards said while we all un­der­stand the hard­ships be­ing faced now the worst thing that could hap­pen is open­ing the econ­o­my too fast and then hav­ing to shut it down again.

“Every­body un­der­stands the tremen­dous hard­ship that many peo­ple are go­ing through and no­body wants the coun­try to con­tin­ue to be in this sit­u­a­tion,” Ed­wards said.

“But the most chal­leng­ing thing would be to open up the econ­o­my and then you are forced to roll that back,” he said.

Ed­wards likened that sit­u­a­tion to some­one con­tract­ing ath­lete’s foot, where they think every­thing is bet­ter and it is cured but then it flares up lat­er on.

With this in mind, he called for for­bear­ance and pa­tience.

The In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion (ILO) has fore­cast­ed that 9.9 per cent of work­ing hours in the Caribbean are ex­pect­ed to be lost dur­ing the sec­ond quar­ter of 2020 be­cause of the im­pact of COVID-19.

Ac­cord­ing to the lat­est da­ta re­leased in the ILO Mon­i­tor, that loss is the equiv­a­lent of 1.5 mil­lion full-time jobs.

But in the face of try­ing times ahead, Caribbean­Jobs.com of­fered some ad­vice to job seek­ers dur­ing this un­prece­dent­ed time.

“First­ly, do not be­come de­spon­dent. It is im­por­tant to un­der­stand that this pan­dem­ic is tem­po­rary. While this is an un­cer­tain time, know that it will not last for­ev­er. Com­pa­nies are still hir­ing, and oth­ers will be hir­ing again soon. So, stay the course, re­main pos­i­tive and don’t quit,” it stat­ed.

“Sec­ond­ly, use this time wise­ly. Up­date your re­sume, clean up your so­cial me­dia pro­files, sign up for a free ac­count on Caribbean­Jobs.com; any­thing that can do to im­prove your dig­i­tal pro­file and en­sure you are ready for your dream job once it be­comes avail­able,” it stat­ed.

“Third­ly, as­sess where you are at in your ca­reer. Giv­en the cur­rent state of the econ­o­my, now is the per­fect time to eval­u­ate where you are at in your ca­reer. If you are lov­ing your job and want to re­main in the in­dus­try you are cur­rent­ly in, con­sid­er sharp­en­ing your tech­ni­cal skills: take an on­line course, or read up on trends in your in­dus­try; any­thing that en­sures you are on top of your game and re­main a valu­able as­set to your com­pa­ny.

On the op­po­site end of the spec­trum, now may just be the per­fect time to con­sid­er a ca­reer change. As we are see­ing, this pan­dem­ic will give birth to so many new de­mands­—from IT, to ed­u­ca­tion and even on­line work. Think of your skills, your pas­sions and your in­ter­ests and fig­ure out how these can cre­ate new work op­por­tu­ni­ties for you,” it stat­ed.

“Last­ly, in­tro­spect and in­no­vate. One of the best things you can do dur­ing this pan­dem­ic is to spend qual­i­ty time with your­self. Whether you write down your thoughts or store men­tal notes, it is re­al­ly im­por­tant to de­ter­mine how you can im­prove and be­come bet­ter at your craft,” it stat­ed.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert has said that the gov­ern­ment in­tends to spend up to $6 bil­lion as part of its COVID-19 re­lief ef­fort.

The gov­ern­ment has, so far, spent $934 mil­lion through its var­i­ous min­istries and agen­cies.Around $12 mil­lion has been spent on the Salary Re­lief Grant with $490 mil­lion pro­ject­ed to spent in to­tal.

The Salary Re­lief grant was im­ple­ment­ed to pro­vide fi­nan­cial sup­port to peo­ple who lost their jobs be­cause of COVID-19

The gov­ern­ment has es­ti­mat­ed that some 80,000 would fall in­to that brack­et.

The grant is a $1,500 month­ly stipend that a per­son is en­ti­tled to for a max­i­mum of three months.

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices has so far spent $98.1 mil­lion with $400 mil­lion ex­pect­ed to be spent.

The So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry has an In­come Sup­port Grant for house­holds with peo­ple out­side the Salary Re­lief Grant purview.

Im­bert said the gov­ern­ment in­tends to ac­cess the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund as well as ac­cess grant fund­ing to as­sist the coun­try dur­ing this dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic pe­ri­od.

The net as­set val­ue of the HSF is US$6.1 bil­lion.

T&T is cur­rent­ly sourc­ing $2 bil­lion (US$300 mil­lion) from var­i­ous mul­ti­lat­er­al agen­cies in­clud­ing US$20 mil­lion from the World Bank, US$130 mil­lion from In­ter-Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank and US$150 mil­lion from the De­vel­op­ment Bank of Latin Amer­i­ca.

Im­bert said the coun­try is al­so pur­su­ing a fur­ther US$500mil­lion for bud­getary sup­port from oth­er ex­ter­nal sources.