The Tribune

By NEIL HARTNELL

Tribune Business Editor

nhartnell@tribunemedia.net

More than 41,000 Bahamians are either unemployed or have given up looking for work, with an FNM Senator yesterday conceding that the economy’s ability to “put a sizeable dent” in these figures “does not exist in the short to medium-term”.

Analysis by Tribune Business shows that if the so-called 12,955 so-called ‘discouraged’ workers were added to the 28,125 Bahamians deemed unemployed, over 41,000 have either given up looking for work or cannot find it - a huge problem for this nation.

And, if those discouraged workers were added to the 191,455 persons said by the Department of Statistics to be in the labour force, the percentage of Bahamians either unemployed or given up seeking a job would be just over 20 per cent.

This effectively means that one in five Bahamians cannot find work or have given up seeking.

Zhivargo Laing, former minister of state for finance, while cautioning on adding ‘discouraged’ workers to the labour force calculation, acknowledged that the heightened unemployment levels - said to be 14.7 per cent nationally - remained a “very serious problem” for the Bahamian economy.

Arguing that the numbers had changed little from those issued prior to the May 2012 general election, Mr Laing said: “Quite frankly, they are the kind of numbers that any current administration going into an election would have to consider could make re-election very difficult.

“It is absolutely true that these kinds of numbers of people not working is a very serious problem for the economy, a very significant challenge.”

Adding that unemployment took both an economic and human toll, Mr Laing told Tribune Business: “That’s why I say this economy is in enormous difficulties, because short-term and medium-term, the prospects of putting a sizeable kind of dent in these numbers does not exist.

“The toll of that on the real economy and the Government’s fiscal situation is really serious. Any time you have elevated unemployment numbers like that, it’s a huge, huge problem. It is the number one problem in the Commonwealth of the Bahamas.”

Mr Laing added that unemployment carried over “into almost every aspect of life, so whether you’re taking about the ability of a family to educate their children, give them a proper meal, a family’s ability to afford adequate housing, unemployment impacts all these things”.

High unemployment levels had been relatively shortlived in past economic downturns, but Mr Laing said the current recession - which had lasted for more than three-four years - had driven many families into “elevated levels of poverty”.

Describing unemployment as a Bahamian problem, not a PLP or FNM problem, Mr Laing said that too often the issue had been politicised - to the detriment of devising sustainable, long-term solutions.

“In too many circumstances, unfortunately we’ve done such a silly thing in politicising the historical circumstances that led to this level of unemployment,” he told Tribune Business.

“We have a level of division in the population that does not allow for an optimal approach to addressing it as a united country.”

James Smith, a key Ministry of Finance consultant and Mr Laing’s ministerial predecessor, agreed that ‘discouraged workers’ should be treated with caution as they were not properly defined.

This category, he explained, could include chief executives and managers who could not find jobs equal to their standing; housewives, pensioners and others who did not have to work.

Still, while arguing that Baha Mar and “major projects in the pipeline would stop the haemorrhaging”, Mr Smith added: “In the short-term we still have to depend on the US, and nothing is happening in their labour force to lead us to be enthusiastic about their growth levels.

“So we have to run faster to stay in the same place. I think we’ll live with higher, double digit unemployment levels for the next couple of years.”

The Bahamian economy’s nature meant it needed jobs in the service sector, but Mr Smith said this was seeing “more re-positioning and downsizing” as opposed to growth.

“We need a shot in the arm in the short-term, and the only place in the short-term will be increased stopover arrivals,” he added.

“We’re fighting to keep these up. We have to remember how many hotel rooms have been closed in Grand Bahama and New Providence in the last few years.”

And Mr Smith said: “This seems to be a condition we’re seeing throughout the Caribbean, and we’re all drawing from the same market that seems to be depressed, which is the eastern seaboard of the US.

“We used to be able to, in the past, have some compensatory mechanism when a downturn happened, but because it’s global we don’t have an escape valve to turn on.”