Labour shortages despite full employment

ALTHOUGH Government has repeatedly stated that Trinidad and Tobago is nearing a situation of full employment, labour shortages have been reported in other parts of the non-energy sector of the economy besides construction.

During a news conference at the Eric Williams Financial Complex last week, Junior Finance Minister Conrad Enill said TT is now close to attaining full employment and has recorded an unemployment rate of 6.7 percent for the period October to December 2005. However the minister’s statements seem to be in conflict with a plethora of ads for workers being posted in several business places throughout the country and concerns expressed by the owners of these establishments about the difficulties they encounter in hiring workers.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, some business owners said they have encountered difficulty in finding qualified workers. These individuals are involved in a variety of businesses such as restaurants, retail stores and service stations. One business person said he has had to reject several job applicants because they lack the necessary educational certificates or appropriate social skills. Another business person claimed that ads for workers at his establishment have gone unanswered for weeks and could be the result of persons seeking employment in lower-level jobs such as CEPEP.

Employers Consultative Association (ECA) president Clarence Rambharat told Newsday yesterday that the figure quoted by Enill represents the number of persons who are actively seeking employment and the ECA has picked up labour shortages in the services sector of the economy. This sector is commonly referred to as the “soft parts” of the economy and includes businesses such as retailing, franchising, healthcare and restaurants.

Rambharat said information available to the ECA suggests that approximately 300 manufacturing jobs were lost in the first quarter of 2006 and there has been heavy spending by Government in job creation through initiatives such as CEPEP and the Unemployment Relief Programme (URP).

Enill indicated that 48,301 men and 72,816 women were employed in the URP for fiscal 2005. He said approximately 6,240 persons were employed in CEPEP during the same period.

While stressing that he was not advocating that Government close down these programmes or that they were wholly responsible for any labour shortages in TT, Rambharat said the ECA is concerned that insufficient numbers of jobs are not being generated in the non-energy sector of the economy in the short to medium term.

Rambharat said the main challenge for CEPEP and URP is converting them into sustainable forms of employment through appropriate training components.

Rambharat also said there has been a growing trend amongst employers to outsource work without having to hire too many workers for the long term.

He also said many employers have expressed concerns that persons who answer their ads for jobs have serious literacy and numeracy problems.

Rambharat said some of these persons are graduates from prominent tertiary education institutions in TT.

He also said labour shortages in TT could be considerably reduced if local employers were able to tap into the regional pool of skilled and unskilled labour through the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). At present, the CSME only allows university graduates, media workers, sportspersons, musicians and artistes to work in any Caricom nation.

Asked if this would create problems with TT nationals claiming that other Caricom nationals were depriving them of jobs, Rambharat said he did not think this would be the case because locals have not been moving aggressively to fill certain types of jobs.

He also said there were many people who were existing solely on money and goods sent to them by relatives living overseas and saw no need to find employment.

TT Manufacturers Association president Paul Quesnel said it is a fact of life that almost every business in the country is looking for workers from “senior manager to the man on the floor.”

He said that as employers seek to attract workers through higher wages, there is the risk of creating inflation. Quesnel said CEPEP and URP have had a role in some of the labour shortages because while those types of jobs may not pay high wages, they offer conveniences to persons such as working close to home.

Explaining that the Central Statistical Office measures unemployment as the percentage of persons who apply for jobs, Quesnel said Government’s pronouncements of full employment in TT could be seen as a contradiction in terms.

He added that the unemployment rate in any country will “never get to zero” because of groups of unemployable persons in those societies.