LIES, DAMN LIES AND STATISTICS

THE Government is insisting there is full employment in Trinidad and Tobago.

Seriously!

Finance Minister Colm Imbert declared a few days ago that “the unemployment rate decreased to 4.7 per cent in 2022.”

Experts, including the International Labour Organisation, have explained that five per cent joblessness is considered full employment.

There are several reasons for the ILO’s calculation, including that some “unemployed workers” are not actively on the job market.

Imbert quoted the Central Statistical Office, the same organisation whose reports the PNM reviled in 2015.

CSO’s data, according to the PNM then, “has not been reliable or timely and is quite often of questionable quality, leading to a loss of confidence in this important institution.”

The PNM “understands the critical importance of data-driven decision-making,” the party said in 2015, and, an independent Statistical Institute would be set up.

Almost eight years later, that new institution has not been established, and the PNM is relying on – and hiding behind – the same “questionable” CSO data.

Imbert gleefully cited the CSO figures and brazenly invited people to visit the organisation’s website.

Even more scandalous is the affront to the thousands of workers – including many single mothers – who lost their jobs or cannot earn a dollar in the current marketplace.

Many millennial and Gen Z graduates have not been able to secure jobs.

When a cruise ship company offered jobs nine months ago, an estimated 8,000 aspirants braved the scorching sun in a queue that snaked around the NAPA building.

Thousands of workers were thrown on the breadline when more than 6,000 small businesses collapsed as a result of the Covid-19 shutdown and lack of support from commercial banks.

Foreign investors are continuing to flee, with Digicel’s 126 dismissals being just the latest worker fallout.

It is estimated that over the past few years, more than 6,000 jobs have been lost in the multinational sector, among them 644 from Arcellor Mittal, 178 from Unilever, 149 from BP, and 80 from Shell.    

The energy sector, which employed 21,300 in 2014, is now down to 10,300.

The 2018 shutdown of Petrotrin and the spin-off effect on service companies in fenceline communities impacted 5,500 workers.

Several contractors and service companies have hopped over to Guyana, taking some skilled employees with them and placing others on the breadline.

The retail sector is in a slump – check the amount of available floor spaces at shopping malls – affecting low-skilled wage earners.

Employers are not required to make reports to the Ministry of Labour of retrenchments and dismissals of five workers or fewer.

People in the real world of Trinidad and Tobago testify that there is unemployment comparable in recent history only to the collapse of the economy in the 1980s.

Just as 40 years ago, the middle class is heading out (many are Canada-bound), causing a brain drain and flight of capital.

Some are mothballing their businesses and sending home workers.

The ongoing influx of undocumented Venezuelans is distorting the labour market, with some employers hiring them at minimal wages and to escape national insurance commitments.

The unemployment crisis and ever-climbing cost of living are affecting families, leading to malnourishment and other health issues, inability to pay bills, and overall hard times.

Do you think Imbert – or anyone else in authority – has taken time to speak with single mothers begging at street corners, sometimes with their hungry children at their sides?

Living in a fool’s paradise means that there are no attempts to assist small businesses, diversify the economy, and generally provide an enabling environment to create and sustain jobs.

Instead, the authorities are manipulating the job figures and, to adopt a cliché, engaging in lies, damn lies and statistics.