Labour sta­tis­tics are like a pulse check of an econ­o­my—they of­fer in­sights in­to how healthy, pro­duc­tive and re­silient a na­tion’s work­force is, and in turn, where the econ­o­my might be head­ed.

As T&T to­day joins the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty in ob­serv­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Work­ers’ Day, al­so called Labour Day, Sabi­na Gomez for­mer chief labour re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Min­istry of Labour, is ques­tion­ing the re­al state of em­ploy­ment in this coun­try.

She made the com­ments in light of sta­tis­tics shared last Fri­day by the Cen­tral Bank in its Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port.

The bank not­ed that labour mar­ket con­di­tions slipped dur­ing the fourth quar­ter of 2024.

“Un­em­ploy­ment trend­ed up­ward, ac­cord­ing to the of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics pub­lished by the CSO. The un­em­ploy­ment rate mea­sured 5.5 per cent in the fourth quar­ter of 2024, com­pared with 4.1 per cent in the same pe­ri­od of 2023. Dur­ing the fourth quar­ter of 2024, the labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate im­proved to 55.9 per cent from 55.5 per cent in the cor­re­spond­ing quar­ter of 2023, as the labour force in­creased by 3,000 per­sons.

“Ex­pan­sion in the labour force re­flect­ed a de­crease in the num­ber of em­ployed per­sons (5,400 per­sons), which co­in­cid­ed with an in­crease in the num­ber of per­sons with­out jobs and ac­tive­ly seek­ing em­ploy­ment (8,200 per­sons),” said the Cen­tral Bank.

The Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Re­port fur­ther not­ed that job loss­es oc­curred in the fol­low­ing sec­tors: whole­sale and re­tail trade, restau­rants and ho­tels, 5,300 jobs; man­u­fac­tur­ing (ex­clud­ing sug­ar and oil, and in­clud­ing min­ing and quar­ry­ing) 5,200 jobs; pe­tro­le­um and gas (in­clud­ing pro­duc­tion, re­fin­ing and ser­vice con­trac­tors, 3,900 jobs; and trans­porta­tion, stor­age and com­mu­ni­ca­tion 500 jobs.

Con­verse­ly, it said gains in em­ploy­ment were record­ed in the fol­low­ing sec­tor: fi­nance, in­sur­ance, re­al es­tate and busi­ness ser­vices 8,800 jobs; con­struc­tion (in­clud­ing elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter) 5,100 jobs; and com­mu­ni­ty, so­cial and per­son­al ser­vices, 700 jobs.

The Cen­tral Bank al­so added that dur­ing the first quar­ter of 2025, pre­lim­i­nary da­ta on job ad­ver­tise­ments hint­ed at de­clines in the de­mand for labour.

It stat­ed dur­ing Jan­u­ary to March 2025, print­ed job ad­verts in the dai­ly news­pa­pers (532) fell by 11.8 per cent (year-on-year), from the 603 job ad­verts pub­lished in the dai­ly news­pa­pers in the first quar­ter of 2024.

Of­fi­cial re­trench­ment no­tices filed with the Min­istry of Labour for the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary to April 2025 in­di­cate that four peo­ple were re­trenched, com­pared to the 96 peo­ple in the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od of 2024, rep­re­sent­ing a year-on-year de­crease of 95.8 per cent.

Job sep­a­ra­tions, the bank said, oc­curred in both the dis­tri­b­u­tion (two peo­ple re­trenched) and per­son­al ser­vices (two peo­ple re­trenched) sec­tors.

How­ev­er, Gomez who re­cent­ly re­tired and is now an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions con­sul­tant told the Busi­ness Guardian that notwith­stand­ing the sta­tis­ti­cal re­ports, the num­bers do not ad­e­quate­ly give a clear pic­ture of the state of em­ploy­ment in T&T.

“When a com­pa­ny clos­es op­er­a­tions, there is no oblig­a­tion to in­form the Min­is­ter. To date, the Min­is­ter of Labour was not in­formed of the num­ber of work­ers whose ser­vices were ter­mi­nat­ed dur­ing the clo­sure of Petrotrin and Trin­mar op­er­a­tions as it was not deemed a re­trench­ment. Per­sons who are com­pen­sat­ed un­der vol­un­tary sep­a­ra­tion pack­ages al­so fall un­der the radar as they are not re­quired to in­form the min­is­ter.

“In ad­di­tion, the da­ta may not re­flect on plat­forms work­ers, per­sons work­ing re­mote­ly with for­eign com­pa­nies not reg­is­tered in Trinidad and To­ba­go. These per­sons may not be cov­ered un­der our labour laws and will al­so fall un­der the radar,” Gomez ex­plained.

Fur­ther, she said there is a grow­ing in­for­mal sec­tor that was ex­posed dur­ing COVID-19. These are peo­ple who work night­ly or week­ly in the food in­dus­try, nail techs, food de­liv­ery per­sons and on­line work­ers.

“These work­ers do not ful­fil the tra­di­tion­al av­er­age 40- hour work week,” she said.

Gomez fur­ther ex­plained that the mar­itime in­dus­try-oil and gas off­shore work­ers who work month on or month off may be em­ployed for on­ly half of the year but may be con­sid­ered to be in a con­tin­u­ous and per­ma­nent em­ploy­ment.

Trevor John­son, lec­tur­er of trade union stud­ies and re­search at the Cipri­ani Col­lege of Labour and Co-op­er­a­tive Stud­ies and al­so an in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions spe­cial­ist, told the Busi­ness Guardian that from a labour per­spec­tive, there con­tin­ues to be a stag­na­tion in em­ploy­ment in T&T.

“This is par­tic­u­lar­ly so for grad­u­ates and school leavers who con­tin­ue to search, with­out much suc­cess, for tan­gi­ble em­ploy­ment and de­cent work as de­mar­cat­ed by the ILO i.e. jobs with good wages and terms and con­di­tions,” he ex­plained.

John­son not­ed there con­tin­ues to be a trend of spo­radic con­tract em­ploy­ment with an em­ploy­ment term rang­ing from one month to one year on av­er­age with no firm promise or con­trac­tu­al oblig­a­tion for re­new­al when the con­tract term ex­pires.

Al­so, he ob­served that be­cause of glob­al and lo­cal eco­nom­ic and labour mar­ket con­di­tions, work­ers are not eas­i­ly shift­ing from job to job or chang­ing sec­tors as they are more in­clined now to stay in their jobs as there is some lev­el of cer­tain­ty.

Econ­o­mist: un­em­ploy­ment rate un­der­states the true

ex­tent of job­less

Econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon, who echoed sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments, said T&T’s un­em­ploy­ment rate un­der­states the true ex­tent of job­less, as the coun­try’s labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate is “alarm­ing­ly low,” at just around 56 per cent.

“This is low­er than many de­vel­oped economies: in the US and the UK, they are 62.4 per cent and 78.7 per cent re­spec­tive­ly, while in the Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean re­gion the av­er­age is ap­prox­i­mate­ly 59 per cent.

“Our low par­tic­i­pa­tion rate im­plies that a sig­nif­i­cant share of our work­ing-age pop­u­la­tion is nei­ther em­ployed nor ac­tive­ly seek­ing work, lead­ing to un­der-utilised hu­man cap­i­tal and con­strain­ing the econ­o­my’s growth po­ten­tial,” Ar­joon said.

Fur­ther, he said be­cause on­ly 56 per cent of work­ing-age adults are count­ed as the labour force, and 5.5 per cent of this labour force is un­em­ployed, the un­em­ploy­ment rate of 5.5 per cent masks the true de­gree of job­less­ness in the coun­try.

The low par­tic­i­pa­tion rate, Ar­joon said, al­so has harm­ful con­se­quences for the na­tion­al in­sur­ance (NIS) fund, as it means few­er peo­ple are con­tribut­ing to the fund.

He not­ed that with many liv­ing longer, these con­tri­bu­tions in­to the fund are in­creas­ing­ly out­weighed by ben­e­fit pay­outs, plac­ing strain on the fund’s sus­tain­abil­i­ty and weak­en­ing its over­all fi­nan­cial po­si­tion.

Al­so, he added that a low par­tic­i­pa­tion rate al­so shrinks the tax base as there are few­er in­come earn­ers con­tribut­ing to in­come tax rev­enue.

“This not on­ly lim­its to­tal tax col­lec­tions but al­so forces a heav­ier bur­den on the re­main­ing tax­pay­ers. Ex­pand­ing the tax base through a high­er par­tic­i­pa­tion rate would bet­ter en­able the Gov­ern­ment to cut rates or boost fund­ing for pub­lic ser­vices,” Ar­joon said.

Look­ing at the sec­toral da­ta, he not­ed con­struc­tion saw an uptick in hir­ing by 5,100 jobs large­ly due to the pub­lic in­fra­struc­tur­al projects and hous­ing de­vel­op­ments, giv­en that T&T was in a gen­er­al elec­tions pe­ri­od.

The man­u­fac­tur­ing sec­tor and the whole­sale and re­tail trade sec­tors, Ar­joon said, suf­fered job loss­es of 5,200 and 5,300, re­spec­tive­ly, large­ly re­flect­ing the ris­ing cost of do­ing busi­ness, which has erod­ed firms’ prof­itabil­i­ty and con­strained their abil­i­ty to sus­tain pay­rolls.

He said a crit­i­cal dri­ver has been the chron­ic short­age of for­eign ex­change from au­tho­rised deal­ers, forc­ing many com­pa­nies to re­sort to high black-mar­ket rates. Com­pound­ing this, per­sis­tent de­lays at port fa­cil­i­ties have gen­er­at­ed steep de­mur­rage and stor­age charges, while high­er ship­ping costs from in­ter­na­tion­al sup­pli­ers have fur­ther squeezed mar­gins, Ar­joon added.

Com­pe­ti­tion from cheap­er im­port­ed goods has al­so un­der­mined lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers’ mar­ket share and em­ploy­ment lev­els, he said.

He ad­vised that by cre­at­ing more pro­duc­tive for­mal jobs, T&T can re­duce the ex­tent of peo­ple turn­ing to the in­for­mal sec­tor for jobs.

Stat­ing that while there is not any re­al da­ta for the in­for­mal em­ploy­ment lo­cal­ly, Ar­joon said T&T’s rate is like­ly to be low­er than the re­gion due to a strong pub­lic sec­tor, but it is still mount­ing, es­pe­cial­ly af­ter the pan­dem­ic, in ar­eas such as agri­cul­ture and ser­vices like do­mes­tic work, small trades etc.

In­for­mal work­ers lack job se­cu­ri­ty and ben­e­fits, and their preva­lence can de­press over­all pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, he said, adding that un­der­em­ploy­ment, where work­ers func­tion in jobs be­low their skill lev­el, im­pedes pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and is an is­sue not cap­tured ful­ly by un­em­ploy­ment sta­tis­tics. 

Ar­joon ad­vised that ex­pand­ing the dig­i­tal econ­o­my and green-en­er­gy sec­tors of­fers a pow­er­ful strat­e­gy to re­duce un­der­em­ploy­ment and fos­ter high-qual­i­ty jobs.