GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

While the Cen­tral Bank has re­port­ed that the un­em­ploy­ment rate mea­sured 3.2 per cent in the third quar­ter of 2023, econ­o­mist Prof Roger Ho­sein says this must al­so be looked at in the con­text of the labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate.

“One of the things I am notic­ing is that the un­em­ploy­ment rate is com­ing down, in part, be­cause the num­ber of peo­ple who are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the labour mar­ket is ac­tu­al­ly falling. So you have to look at the peo­ple who are eco­nom­i­cal­ly in­ac­tive as well. This is some­thing that pol­i­cy­mak­ers in T&T have not been pay­ing suf­fi­cient at­ten­tion to in terms of what I read in the news­pa­pers, in terms of a for­mal as­sess­ment of these eco­nom­i­cal­ly in­ac­tive peo­ple,” Ho­sein ex­plained while speak­ing on CNC3’s Morn­ing Brew pro­gramme on Wednes­day.

In its Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin for Jan­u­ary 2024, the Cen­tral Bank stat­ed: “The un­em­ploy­ment rate mea­sured 3.2 per cent in the third quar­ter of 2023, marked­ly low­er than the 5.4 per cent record­ed in the same pe­ri­od a year ear­li­er. The de­cline in the rate of un­em­ploy­ment in 2023 aligns with the ob­served strength in do­mes­tic eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, led by the non-en­er­gy sec­tor.

“The num­ber of per­sons with jobs in­creased by 20,800 per­sons in the third quar­ter of 2023 (year-on-year), while the num­ber of per­sons with­out jobs and seek­ing em­ploy­ment fell by 12,600 per­sons,” it stat­ed.

Ho­sein said there must be more in­for­ma­tion and da­ta to show what peo­ple were cur­rent­ly do­ing to sus­tain them­selves fi­nan­cial­ly.

“Un­less we for­mal­ly ac­cess this, what­ev­er we do would be some amount of guess­ing. Some of them are like­ly go­ing in­to the in­for­mal sec­tor to make a hus­tle. That type of job is more dif­fi­cult in some cas­es than jobs in the for­mal sec­tor so if you get a job in the man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor or the agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor or the ser­vices sec­tor you would have ac­cess to run­ning wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty etc. You see the dif­fi­cul­ties of the streets. You have to fend off traf­fic, peo­ple walk­ing by.

“Mi­grat­ing from the for­mal em­ploy­ment in­to the in­for­mal sec­tor or the hus­tle sec­tor is not al­ways the best op­tion in terms of de­cen­cy of work,” Ho­sein ex­plained.

He added that an­oth­er as­pect could be when some peo­ple drop out of the labour mar­ket, they could be join­ing gangs, adding that there was cur­rent­ly no for­mal da­ta to ac­tu­al­ly quan­ti­fy this.

“But if you look at the amount of rob­beries and the amount of mur­ders, it gives you an in­di­ca­tion that a lot of young peo­ple are dis­tract­ed from em­ploy­ment in one form or the oth­er and any pol­i­cy­mak­er should be very con­cerned about that be­cause it af­fects your pro­duc­tive ca­pac­i­ty and your pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,” Ho­sein fur­ther ex­plained.

The CSO al­so not­ed that the in­fla­tion rate for Jan­u­ary 2024 stood at 0.3 per cent, a de­crease from 0.7 per cent record­ed in the pre­vi­ous pe­ri­od (De­cem­ber 2023/ De­cem­ber 2022).

Ho­sein de­scribed this as good as many peo­ple are on fixed in­come.

How­ev­er, he said what the CSO did not in­di­cate was whether was nom­i­nal or re­al GDP growth.

“In ei­ther case it is still use­ful. Growth com­ing in any form is wel­comed growth ... and we take that growth and we try to build on that mo­men­tum,” Ho­sein ad­vised.