More quality jobs seen as needed to rescue the working poor
JAMAICA’S POVERTY rate at 17.1 per cent, a situation impacting an estimated 478,800 persons, remains relatively high despite a decrease in unemployment because notwithstanding having jobs it is taking longer for the working poor to emerge from that status.
According to Director General of the Planning Institute of Jamaica, PIOJ, Dr Wayne Henry many factors can go into the reason why the lower unemployment rate, at 9.6 per cent, lags the poverty rate.
Referring to the working poor, he said “persons may have jobs and it may take them a longer while even as (they) accumulate earnings to come out of poverty even while they are working.”
Alluding to the type of jobs that are being created, Henry said at the PIOJ’s office in New Kingston last week, that “we’ve spoken of the need in times past for greater value added as we continue to push in terms of higher end jobs overall and more training and enhancing and equipping the labour force.”
The Statistical Institute of Jamaica, Statin, said the January 2018 labour force survey showed there was an increase in employment of 22,600 when compared with January 2017.
Of that number the industry which accounted for the largest rise in employment was the wholesale and retail trade, repair and installation of machinery which added 7,900 persons. Along with the construction sector which accounted for an increase of 7,300 persons and hotels and restaurants those three sectors added 21,600 persons, suggesting that only 1,000 more persons found employment outside of those industries during the period in question.
Statin Director General, Carol Coy said part of the reasons for the decrease in the unemployment rate may be explained by the fact that the labour force declined in January 2018, and since employment went up “unemployment is also going to fall.”
The survey also found that in some industries, such as agriculture, as well as transport and storage employment decreased.
But for President of the Union of Clerical Administrative and Supervisory Employees, Vincent Morrison, he would want to see the empirical evidence on the reported decrease in the unemployment rate from what the PIOJ said was about 14 per cent in 2016 to 9.6 per cent in January 2018.
“I am not saying there might not have been some movement, but from 14 down to 9.6 looks a bit astronomical to me,” said Morrison, in an interview with the Financial Gleaner.
“As one who has a very close and useful grasp of the situation in all sectors around the country I find some of the figures somewhat startling,” he said.
Morrison said one can see activities in the construction sector which leads to increased employment, but in the bauxite sector, for example, only Alpart has been taking on employees and mostly on fixed term contractual bases.
“Yes, they took on quite a few persons when the plant had to be repaired for production (in late 2017), but what we discovered is that a lot of those workers are no longer there. The plant has been repaired, up and running so you wouldn’t need all of those numbers,” he said.
Morrison said in his own experience, prices in the supermarket and elsewhere have been rising faster that the inflation figures suggest, noting that the basket that Statin has been using for years is outdated and irrelevant.
If inflation is as we describe it, if employment is as we describe it then I cannot see where the support for the reduction of poverty is coming from. Again, when you travel the countryside you can see it, you can feel it. The fact of the matter is that if it wasn’t for the matter of remittance the situation in the countryside would have been far worse,” Morrison said.