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Thursday, July 10, 2025

Sociologist: COVID unemployment data critical to way forward

by

Joshua Seemungal
1888 days ago
20200508
People wait in line outside the National Insurance Board (NIB) in San Fernando on March 24, to apply for salary relief grants.

People wait in line outside the National Insurance Board (NIB) in San Fernando on March 24, to apply for salary relief grants.

RISHI RAGOONATH

More than 273,000 peo­ple have lost their lives as a re­sult of COVID-19, but the num­ber of peo­ple who have lost their jobs as a re­sult of mea­sures aimed at pre­vent­ing the spread of the virus is in the mil­lions.

On Fri­day, the US Bu­reau of Labour Sta­tis­tics re­leased a re­port that claimed the Unit­ed States was ex­pe­ri­enc­ing its high­est lev­el of un­em­ploy­ment since the Great De­pres­sion that be­gan in 1929.

Its find­ings stat­ed that un­em­ploy­ment rose to 14.7 per cent, with close to 20.5 mil­lion cit­i­zens out of a job in April. But, while the US can put the ex­tent of the so­cio-eco­nom­ic fall­out from COVID-19 in num­bers, here in Trinidad and To­ba­go we have been un­able to so far.

Ac­cord­ing to so­ci­ol­o­gist Dr Roy Mc­Cree, it is clear that so­cio-eco­nom­ic is­sues like un­em­ploy­ment, pover­ty and phys­i­cal in­ac­tiv­i­ty have been wors­ened by COVID-19.

“What we need to do, as part of the re­cov­ery process, is to find out the ex­tent to which those prob­lems have been ex­ac­er­bat­ed,” the se­nior re­search fel­low at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies’ St Au­gus­tine Cam­pus said.

To ac­com­plish this, he said, it is im­per­a­tive that da­ta, re­lat­ed to the is­sue, is gath­ered quick­ly and com­pre­hen­sive­ly.

This da­ta is es­sen­tial, ac­cord­ing to Dr Mc­Cree, to for­mu­late an ef­fec­tive pub­lic pol­i­cy re­sponse.

“This is a fun­da­men­tal re­quire­ment. It’s not just about re-open­ing bor­ders. It’s not just about be­ing able to go to the beach or go­ing back to the lifestyle we were ac­cus­tomed to, but it’s al­so about look­ing at the fall­out,” Dr Mc­Cree said.

De­spite the fall­out hap­pen­ing on sev­er­al eco­nom­ic and so­cial lev­els, he said he isn’t hear­ing any con­ver­sa­tions about the gath­er­ing of da­ta to paint a full pic­ture. He claimed that there are cer­tain parts of the coun­try, es­pe­cial­ly in re­mote ar­eas, that have been af­fect­ed more than oth­ers.

Even be­fore COVID-19, re­mote ar­eas, like To­co and San­gre Grande, were ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­creas­es in un­em­ploy­ment and pover­ty, he added.

He said they are in a pick­le.

“We have to move quick­ly to col­lect da­ta, par­tic­u­lar­ly in those ar­eas that are not eas­i­ly ac­ces­si­ble.”

The Vice Pres­i­dent of the Caribbean So­ci­o­log­i­cal As­so­ci­a­tion ac­knowl­edged that da­ta col­lec­tion takes time and mon­ey.


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