Cur­tis Williams

cur­tis.williams@guardian.co.tt

The un­em­ploy­ment rate has fall­en sig­nif­i­cant­ly ac­cord­ing to the lat­est eco­nom­ic bul­letin of the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT).

The re­port re­vealed that the un­em­ploy­ment rate has fall­en from 6.5 per cent to 5.1 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2022 when com­pared to the same pe­ri­od last year.

“The lat­est of­fi­cial labour mar­ket da­ta from the CSO shows an un­em­ploy­ment rate of 5.1 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2022, down from 6.5 per cent record­ed in the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter of 2021. The num­ber of em­ployed in­di­vid­u­als in­creased by 5.1 thou­sand per­sons (year on-year) in the first quar­ter of 2022,” the re­port read.

It not­ed that per­sons with­out jobs and ac­tive­ly seek­ing em­ploy­ment de­clined by 8.5 thou­sand, while 3.5 thou­sand per­sons left the labour force, con­tribut­ing to a labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate of 55.9 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2022 with 56.3 per cent in the com­pa­ra­ble quar­ter of 2021.

“Sup­ple­men­tary in­di­ca­tors used by the bank to mon­i­tor over­all labour mar­ket con­di­tions, such as re­trench­ment no­tices and job ad­ver­tise­ments in the print me­dia, al­so sug­gest an im­prove­ment in ear­ly-2022, but con­di­tions re­main rel­a­tive­ly soft,” the lat­est eco­nom­ic bul­letin of the Cen­tral Bank re­ports.

The bank not­ed that ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of Labour, 839 per­sons were re­trenched in the sev­en months up to Ju­ly 2022 com­pared to 941 per­sons in the com­par­a­tive pe­ri­od of 2021. It as­serts that al­though the num­ber of re­trench­ments have de­creased from lev­els record­ed in 2021, the low­er fig­ures may not re­flect those per­sons who lost jobs due to busi­ness clo­sures.

The re­port read, “Most of the re­trench­ments in the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to Ju­ly 2022 oc­curred in the trans­port, stor­age and com­mu­ni­ca­tion (456 per­sons), fi­nance and re­al es­tate (222 per­sons) and man­u­fac­tur­ing (133 per­sons) in­dus­tries. At the end of May, Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TSTT) an­nounced plans to re­trench 468 work­ers, as part of the com­pa­ny’s re­struc­tur­ing ex­er­cise, while Unilever Caribbean Lim­it­ed (UCL) pro­posed to lay-off over 100 work­ers at the end of Ju­ly 2022 af­ter the com­pa­ny clos­es its lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing plant.”

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank fol­low­ing de­clines in 2020 and 2021, the num­ber of job ad­ver­tise­ments pub­lished in the print me­dia in­creased by 16.9 per cent (year-on-year) dur­ing the first eight months of 2022, im­ply­ing that the de­mand for labour may be re­cov­er­ing.

It said eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty is ex­pect­ed to im­prove in 2022. Lo­cal en­er­gy pro­duc­tion, the Cen­tral Bank not­ed is poised to ben­e­fit from the start-up of sev­er­al up­stream projects from bpTT, Shell Trinidad and To­ba­go, EOG Re­sources Trinidad and Touch­stone Ex­plo­ration. Ad­di­tion­al im­pe­tus should come from high­er com­mod­i­ty prices and in­creased de­mand for en­er­gy-re­lat­ed prod­ucts.

Ac­tiv­i­ty in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor is ex­pect­ed to ben­e­fit from height­ened busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and re­cov­er­ing con­sumer de­mand, said the CBTT.

It not­ed that the coun­try’s in­fla­tion rate had risen and ex­pect­ed con­tin­ued ris­ing prices.

“The ex­ter­nal im­pe­tus to do­mes­tic in­fla­tion is ex­pect­ed to per­sist in the short term. Dis­rup­tions to glob­al sup­ply chains and high in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy and oth­er com­mod­i­ty prices are like­ly to con­tin­ue in the clos­ing months of 2022,” the bank’s bul­letin read.

Ac­cord­ing to the Cen­tral Bank, as with many oth­er coun­tries, macro­eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy in Trinidad and To­ba­go will con­tin­ue to grap­ple with the chal­lenges of nur­tur­ing a sol­id eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery along­side in­fla­tion­ary con­cerns.

Ev­i­dence of stronger com­pe­ti­tion world­wide the Cen­tral Bank said al­so points to the need to ad­vance struc­tur­al re­forms to bet­ter po­si­tion the econ­o­my to pen­e­trate ex­port mar­kets.