The dis­tin­guished econ­o­mist, mi bre­dren Vanus and two of his col­lab­o­ra­tors—one in eco­nom­ics on the glob­al cam­pus, the oth­er in eco­nom­ics and sta­tis­tics—have as­sem­bled da­ta from the CSO and in­ter­na­tion­al sources on eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment in the coun­try and pro­duced analy­ses that are more than sober­ing. The con­clu­sions are sober­ing for Trinidad and even more sober­ing for To­ba­go.

They fo­cus on labour mar­ket con­di­tions in the two is­lands, in­clud­ing trends in labour pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and GDP per capi­ta. Their analy­ses are in­formed by, but up­date, the in­sights of ear­li­er the­o­ries de­vel­oped by No­bel Lau­re­ate Arthur Lewis and econ­o­mists Lloyd Best, Kari Levitt, and Er­ic St Cyr. They come in a chap­ter of a book that will soon see the light of day.

I fo­cus, in this col­umn, on sec­tion 2 of the chap­ter en­ti­tled ‘Labour Mar­ket Con­di­tions, Labour Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and GDP per capi­ta’ and, while the da­ta pro­vide de­scrip­tions of the state of af­fairs of the whole coun­try, as well as com­par­isons be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad, I will pay more at­ten­tion here to the na­tion­al sit­u­a­tion. The in­for­ma­tion will es­sen­tial­ly re­late to the year 2022 and the sec­ond quar­ter of 2023 (ab­bre­vi­at­ed to 2023Q2) and I will fo­cus more on the ed­u­ca­tion­al char­ac­ter­is­tics of the labour force af­ter out­lin­ing the labour force sta­tis­tics.

In 2022, there were 594,600 peo­ple in the na­tion­al labour mar­ket, with 32,000 or five per cent liv­ing in To­ba­go and 562,600 or 95 per cent work­ing in Trinidad. By the end of 2023Q2, the na­tion­al labour force had in­creased by 1.3 per cent to 602,500, with the labour force in To­ba­go de­clin­ing by one per cent to 31,700, but the labour force in Trinidad in­creas­ing by 1.5 per cent to 570,800.

By the end of 2023Q2, to­tal jobs in To­ba­go were 31,000, a loss of 200 jobs or just un­der one per cent, and the is­land’s share of to­tal jobs had de­clined to five per cent. On the oth­er hand, to­tal jobs in Trinidad had in­creased by 2.2 per cent to 545,700, cor­re­spond­ing to an in­crease in the is­land’s share to 95 per cent. The na­tion­al em­ploy­ment rate had in­creased mod­est­ly to 95.72 per cent of the labour force, that of To­ba­go had re­mained vir­tu­al­ly the same at 98 per cent, and that of Trinidad had in­creased to 95.6 per cent. Fur­ther, from 2022, three per cent of the na­tion’s un­em­ployed lived in To­ba­go and 97 per cent lived in Trinidad.

The de­cline of the labour force and the de­cline in the num­ber of jobs in To­ba­go re­flect the fact that while To­ba­go was los­ing jobs, Trinidad was cre­at­ing new jobs. Ac­cord­ing­ly, in the ab­sence of new job cre­ation in To­ba­go, peo­ple who can­not find em­ploy­ment in To­ba­go have been mi­grat­ing to Trinidad and else­where to share in bet­ter job prospects cre­at­ed there.

So there are high lev­els of em­ploy­ment in both is­lands, which must be a good thing. But what about the qual­i­ty of the jobs? Let’s see what the da­ta say.

The da­ta show the fol­low­ing at the end of 2022. About 12 per cent of the na­tion­al labour force had re­ceived no bet­ter than pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion, and an­oth­er 25.4 per cent had re­ceived sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion with some sup­ple­men­tary train­ing but had passed no sub­jects.

The da­ta fur­ther show that, at the end of 2023Q2, the share with no bet­ter than pri­ma­ry ed­u­ca­tion had in­creased to about 15 per cent and the share with on­ly sec­ondary ex­po­sure plus train­ing had mar­gin­al­ly in­creased to 25.8 per cent.

These are work­ers with lev­el 1 skills as de­fined by the ILO. (Skill lev­els are de­ter­mined by the ILO.) So, over­all, at the end of 2023Q2, about 40 per cent of the na­tion­al labour force were in­ad­e­quate­ly ed­u­cat­ed to sup­port de­vel­op­ment of high-tech­nol­o­gy cap­i­tal pro­duc­tion in the na­tion­al pro­duc­tion sys­tem, a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease from 37.4 per cent at the end of 2022.

At the end of 2022, 18.4 per cent of the na­tion­al labour force had re­ceived sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion with one to four pass­es, some sup­ple­ment­ed by ad­di­tion­al train­ing. A fur­ther 17.9 per cent had re­ceived sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion with five or more pass­es, some­times sup­ple­ment­ed by fur­ther train­ing. By the end of 2023Q2, the share with sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion and one to four pass­es plus train­ing was still at 18.3 per cent, and a slight­ly small­er share of 17.4 per cent had re­ceived sec­ondary ed­u­ca­tion with five or more pass­es, some with ad­di­tion­al train­ing.

In gen­er­al then, by the end of 2023Q2, on­ly about 36.0 per cent of the labour force had re­ceived rea­son­able ed­u­ca­tion, mar­gin­al­ly down from the 36.3 per cent at the end of 2022. Such work­ers could un­der­take work re­quir­ing ILO-de­fined lev­el 2 skills, such as cler­i­cal work, ser­vice and sales work, craft and re­lat­ed work, and work in plant and ma­chin­ery as­sem­bly and op­er­a­tion.

Over­all then, by the end of 2023Q2, 76 per cent of the na­tion­al work­force still had in­suf­fi­cient knowl­edge and skills to sup­port de­vel­op­ment of high-tech­nol­o­gy cap­i­tal out­put that could bring win­ning so­lu­tions to prob­lems thrown up in ex­port mar­kets. This fact should be alarm­ing.

The mat­ter is even more alarm­ing when we add the fact that, at the end of 2022, on­ly ap­prox­i­mate­ly 139,900 peo­ple or 24 per cent of the na­tion­al labour force had ter­tiary train­ing re­sult­ing in cer­tifi­cates, diplo­mas, and uni­ver­si­ty de­grees, and the fur­ther fact that, by the end of 2023Q2, this num­ber had de­clined to 130,000 or about 22 per cent of the labour force.

The lack of growth in the num­bers of such work­ers should be a mat­ter of con­cern to pol­i­cy­mak­ers, since this is the group with ILO-de­fined lev­el 3 and 4 ed­u­ca­tion and train­ing that em­bod­ies much of the na­tion­al ca­pac­i­ty to lead the up­grade of gov­er­nance, the de­vel­op­ment of high-tech cap­i­tal ser­vice in­dus­tries, and the in­no­va­tion process, all of which un­der­lie pro­duc­tiv­i­ty growth.

I should point out the da­ta on ed­u­ca­tion di­rect­ly con­tra­dict the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s rev­e­la­tion in the Bud­get State­ment that the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem is pro­duc­ing a work­force that is ad­e­quate­ly ed­u­cat­ed to sup­port the trans­for­ma­tion of T&T in­to a mod­ern knowl­edge-based econ­o­my.

To be con­tin­ued.

Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment, and pol­i­tics in T&T and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He has al­so writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all the ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try. He can be reached at jay­win­ster@gmail.com