The true sta­tus of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s labour mar­ket is hard to as­sess.

In the past month alone, news broke that both Sco­tia­bank and TSTT were set to send home work­ers as both com­pa­nies pre­pare to ad­just their busi­ness op­er­a­tions. Both de­ci­sions were born out of the im­pact of the pan­dem­ic and digi­ti­sa­tion as Sco­tia­bank not­ed the re­duced rev­enue from their loan port­fo­lio while TSTT point­ed to ma­jor drop offs in voice call­ing on both land­lines and mo­bile.

How­ev­er, it is un­clear just what kind of mar­ket these soon to be re­lease work­ers may faced, as the Cen­tral Bank is ex­pec­tant of a bet­ter Labour mar­ket, there are less jobs be­ing of­fered for­mal­ly.

 In fact, based on the da­ta pre­sent­ed in the Cen­tral Bank’s Jan­u­ary Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin, the ac­tions of TSTT and Sco­tia­bank are con­trary to the trend as few­er work­ers ap­peared to be head­ed home in the past year.

It was not­ed in the bul­letin that the Min­istry of Labour had few­er re­ports of re­trench­ment in 2021, com­pared to 2020 when the pan­dem­ic first struck.

The bul­letin stat­ed, “1,098 per­sons were re­trenched dur­ing the first ten months of 2021, com­pared with 2,517 per­sons dur­ing a sim­i­lar pe­ri­od of 2020. Though the num­ber of re­trench­ments de­creased in 2021, this fig­ure may not re­flect those who lost jobs due to busi­ness clo­sures. Most of the re­trench­ments dur­ing the first ten months of 2021 oc­curred in the dis­tri­b­u­tion, restau­rants and ho­tels (409 per­sons), en­er­gy (285 per­sons), and man­u­fac­tur­ing (235 per­sons) in­dus­tries.”

How­ev­er, the col­lec­tion of da­ta through­out the pan­dem­ic has been dif­fi­cult and the Bank had pre­vi­ous­ly not­ed chal­lenges in as­cer­tain­ing the true un­em­ploy­ment fig­ures and had even re­sort­ed to scan­ning news­pa­pers for va­can­cy no­tices.

The Eco­nom­ic Bul­letin how­ev­er not­ed, even such post­ing were in de­cline.

The re­port stat­ed, “The month­ly dai­ly av­er­age num­ber of job ad­ver­tise­ments pub­lished in the print me­dia dur­ing 2021 de­clined by 16.0 per cent when com­pared to 2020, and by 50.4 per cent when com­pared to 2019 (pre-pan­dem­ic).”

The eco­nom­ic bul­letin, how­ev­er, stat­ed the gov­ern­ment’s re­moval of the State of Emer­gency and var­i­ous COVID-19 re­stric­tions as well as the im­ple­men­ta­tion of safe zones au­gured well for the labour mar­ket.

How­ev­er, re­turn­ing busi­ness­es are not guar­an­teed suc­cess as the bank not­ed the pan­dem­ic had changed how many con­duct­ed busi­ness.

The bul­letin al­so recog­nised that busi­ness­es  are now chal­lenged to adapt as the pan­dem­ic in­creas­ing­ly called for “more elec­tron­ic trans­ac­tions and low­er on­site ac­tiv­i­ties, pos­ing a chal­lenge to the sur­vival of some firms that are slow to adapt.”

Sco­tia­bank and TSTT are ex­am­ples of this. The bank, in con­firm­ing 149 work­ers were set to send home in May, ex­plained why it need­ed to change ap­proach­es. Sco­tia­bank said, “Cus­tomers are us­ing our branch­es dif­fer­ent­ly to­day—less fre­quent­ly, as they com­plete more trans­ac­tions on­line, and more for com­plex needs.”

TSTT sim­i­lar­ly con­firmed their up­com­ing re­struc­tur­ing was due to nec­es­sary changes to re­main vi­able.

The job mar­ket is not the on­ly place where im­prove­ments are chal­lenged by vari­ables cre­at­ed by the pan­dem­ic. De­spite sev­er­al in­di­ca­tions that growth is ex­pect­ed for Trinidad and To­ba­go in 2022, the Cen­tral Bank is con­cerned about in­fla­tion and the chal­lenges along the sup­ply chain.
The Bul­letin re­port­ed, “Fol­low­ing the pro­longed lock­down pe­ri­od in 2021, Trinidad and To­ba­go is ex­pect­ed to grow in 2022. Growth is ex­pect­ed to be fair­ly broad-based. On the en­er­gy front, high­er nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion is ex­pect­ed, as sev­er­al projects be­ing un­der­tak­en by ma­jor play­ers are an­tic­i­pat­ed to come on stream in the first half of 2022. Full year pro­duc­tion in non-en­er­gy sec­tors will al­so sur­pass 2021 lev­els once there are no ma­jor re­ver­sals to­wards sig­nif­i­cant re­stric­tions on mo­bil­i­ty.”

How­ev­er, the bank not­ed the surge in prices in the lat­ter half of 2021, caused main­ly by the in­ter­rup­tions at var­i­ous trade route around the world, was wor­ri­some.

The re­port stat­ed, “High­er prices, par­tic­u­lar­ly im­port­ed in­fla­tion, will how­ev­er pose a chal­lenge. The in­ter­na­tion­al short­age of ship­ping con­tain­ers, high­er ship­ping costs (freight and in­sur­ance) are ex­pect­ed to per­sist in­to the ear­ly months of 2022, along­side some pres­sure on prices of in­ter­na­tion­al agri­cul­tur­al com­modi­ties. The wide­ly ex­pect­ed rise in in­ter­est rates in the US and oth­er ar­eas will al­so fea­ture in­to the cal­i­bra­tion of do­mes­tic mon­e­tary pol­i­cy and af­fect the pub­lic sec­tor debt dy­nam­ics.”

The re­port not­ed that dur­ing the pe­ri­od June 2021 to No­vem­ber 2021, head­line in­fla­tion in­creased, with the bul­letin point­ing out, “sup­ply-side fac­tors such as the surge in in­ter­na­tion­al food prices, high­er ship­ping costs, and in­ter­na­tion­al trans­porta­tion de­lays caused in­fla­tion to edge up­ward.”

The re­port ex­plained, “Though core in­fla­tion was rel­a­tive­ly mut­ed dur­ing June 2021 to Sep­tem­ber 2021, core in­fla­tion jumped in No­vem­ber 2021. Core in­fla­tion moved from 1.1 per cent year-on-year in June 2021 to 1.6 per cent in Sep­tem­ber 2021. In No­vem­ber 2021, core in­fla­tion jumped to 3.0 per cent. The in­crease in core in­fla­tion was dri­ven by faster price in­creas­es in the hous­ing, trans­port, and fur­nish­ings sub-in­dices.” It al­so stat­ed, “Food in­fla­tion ac­cel­er­at­ed over the re­view pe­ri­od, re­flect­ing in the main, high­er food im­port prices. Food in­fla­tion moved to 6.1 per cent year-on-year in No­vem­ber 2021 from 5.1 per cent.”

These surges al­so co­in­cid­ed with a pe­ri­od of mixed eco­nom­ic for­tunes for Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The bank not­ed the lat­ter half of 2021 turned out to be mixed bag for Do­mes­tic Eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, as it over­saw a pe­ri­od  where many busi­ness­es re­turned to op­er­a­tion.

The re­port stat­ed, “Avail­able in­for­ma­tion for the third quar­ter of 2021 nonethe­less showed a de­cline in the Cen­tral Bank’s Quar­ter­ly In­dex of Re­al Eco­nom­ic Ac­tiv­i­ty (2012=100) by 3.0 per cent, com­pared to the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of 2020. The de­cline was large­ly at­trib­ut­able to a 3.5 per cent fall-off in non-en­er­gy sec­tor pro­duc­tion while ac­tiv­i­ty in the en­er­gy sec­tor de­clined 1.9 per cent.”

The de­cline in en­er­gy sec­tor ac­tiv­i­ty was at­trib­uted to re­duced sup­ply of nat­ur­al gas. This, the bul­letin not­ed lead to the de­cline in the in­dus­try de­spite the sec­tor en­joy­ing be­ing boost­ed by sig­nif­i­cant­ly high en­er­gy prices.

The bul­letin said, “Nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion slumped 17.4 per cent year-on-year over the third quar­ter of 2021, re­flect­ing con­tin­ued nat­ur­al gas sup­ply chal­lenges.”

The sta­tus of At­lantic LNG, in par­tic­u­lar, lead to the de­clines.

It stat­ed, “The con­tin­ued clo­sure of the At­lantic Train I fa­cil­i­ty, cou­pled with re­duced util­i­sa­tion rates at the oth­er LNG trains, re­sult­ed in a 48.6 per cent drop in liq­ue­fied nat­ur­al gas (LNG) pro­duc­tion over the quar­ter. Pro­duc­tion of LNG was al­so set back by a main­te­nance pro­gramme un­der­tak­en at At­lantic Train II dur­ing the pe­ri­od. Led by the de­cline in LNG out­put, es­ti­mates point to a 40.8 per cent de­crease in the Re­fin­ing sub-sec­tor in the third quar­ter of the year.”

The re­port, how­ev­er, not­ed growth in the Petro­chem­i­cals sub-sec­tor grew by 37.7 per cent in the third quar­ter of 2021, which was dri­ven large­ly by im­proved methanol pro­duc­tion.

The re­port stat­ed, “Methanol out­put in­creased by a size­able 94.2 per cent over the pe­ri­od giv­en the added yield from the new Caribbean Gas Chem­i­cals Lim­it­ed (CG­CL) fa­cil­i­ty, cou­pled with a base ef­fect on ac­count of mar­ket-re­lat­ed clo­sures at sev­er­al fa­cil­i­ties one year pri­or. Am­mo­nia pro­duc­tion grew 8.1 per cent over the pe­ri­od, on ac­count of a base ef­fect, giv­en down­time at the Nu­trien fa­cil­i­ty in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of 2020, while urea out­put de­clined 6.1 per cent.”

The bul­letin said, how­ev­er, the fi­nal quar­ter of 2021 looked promis­ing as there were signs of an in­crease in nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion, as well as ac­tiv­i­ty gen­er­at­ed by BP’s Mat­a­pal project which start­ed in Sep­tem­ber 2021.

Out­side of the En­er­gy sec­tor there were de­clines in nu­mer­ous sec­tors in­clud­ing con­struc­tion, which is “es­ti­mat­ed to have slowed to 13.0 per cent year-on-year in the third quar­ter of 2021, fol­low­ing a 41.4 per cent de­cline in the pre­vi­ous quar­ter when COVID-19 re­stric­tions were in force.”

How­ev­er, the bul­letin recog­nised signs of a resur­gence in the non en­er­gy as it re­port­ed, “De­spite the de­cline, growth in oth­er non-en­er­gy sec­tors in the third quar­ter helped to tem­per the fall in over­all ac­tiv­i­ty. The Trans­porta­tion and Stor­age sub-sec­tor con­tin­ued to show signs of re­cov­ery in the third quar­ter of 2021, with in­di­ca­tors point­ing to an 8.1 per cent rise in ac­tiv­i­ty.”