More than 21,000 Jamaicans were no longer employed in July, with most of the losses concentrated in formal jobs, even as the country’s unemployment rate remained near historic lows, according to new data released Wednesday by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN).
The July Labour Force Survey showed employment falling by 21,900 persons to 1.419 million, down from 1.441 million a year earlier.
The labour force contracted by 21,800 persons to 1.469 million, while the number of people outside the labour force increased by the same amount to 687,300.
The unemployment rate edged up only marginally to 3.4 per cent from 3.3 per cent a year earlier.
“The reduction in the labour force was therefore largely driven by persons leaving employment and moving outside the labour force,” STATIN Deputy Director General Dr Natalie Simpson said during the agency’s quarterly media briefing.
As a result, the labour force participation rate declined to 68.1 per cent from 69.1 per cent a year earlier, while the employment-to-population ratio fell to 65.8 per cent from 66.8 per cent.
The survey was also significant because it marked the first official publication of new measures of formal and informal employment and employment by formal and informal sectors following changes introduced when STATIN revised its Labour Force Survey in 2024.
STATIN said the revised labour-force questionnaire was aligned with international labour-statistics standards and was designed to generate additional labour-market indicators.
STATIN stressed that the new indicators track two different dimensions of the labour market: the type of business in which a person works and the characteristics of the job itself.
Employment by sector classifies workers according to the type of business in which they work.
Under that measure, 715,400 Jamaicans, or 50.4 per cent of employed persons, worked in the formal sector in July, while 671,700 worked in the informal sector and 32,100 were engaged in household own-use and community activities.
Formal and informal employment, meanwhile, relate to the characteristics of a worker’s job.
STATIN defines formal employment as jobs that provide arrangements such as paid leave, pension contributions, National Insurance Scheme contributions or written employment contracts. Informal employment refers to jobs that do not provide those protections.
“What we’re doing is providing additional information so you can look behind the headline numbers and understand better what it means when we talk about the number of persons employed. This is now speaking to the quality of employment,” Simpson said.
The figures also revealed that the year’s employment losses were concentrated in formal jobs.
“While the number of persons in informal employment increased modestly by 2,100, the number of persons in formal employment declined by approximately 24,000. This indicates that the decline in overall employment of 21,800 was largely reflected in the decline in formal employment,” Simpson said.
Looking at the employment measure, formal employment accounted for 43.8 per cent of employed persons in July, while informal employment accounted for 56.2 per cent.
According to Simpson, the new data provide policymakers with a deeper understanding of the labour market than traditional employment and unemployment statistics alone.
“It’s critical because it informs policy and decision-making. For example, what it means to be informally employed is that you are not benefiting from certain social protections. You’re not getting paid sick leave, you’re not contributing to a pension. It speaks to the quality of the employment that our labour force is experiencing,” she said.
The losses were concentrated in several key industries, offering further clues about where the labour market weakened over the year.
According to STATIN, employment in agriculture, forestry and fishing fell by 11,400 persons over the year, while real estate and other business services shed 9,100 jobs.
Construction was the main bright spot, recording the largest increase in employment during the period despite the overall decline in jobs.
Women accounted for the larger share of the employment decline.
Female employment fell by 13,300 persons to 652,200, compared with a reduction of 8,600 among men, whose employment total stood at 767,000.
Young workers were also affected.
Employment among persons aged 15 to 24 declined by 6.4 per cent to 169,500, although youth unemployment improved, falling from 20,500 to 18,200.
The youth unemployment rate declined to 9.7 per cent from 10.2 per cent a year earlier.
The survey does not track the movement of individual workers between labour-market categories, meaning STATIN could not determine whether workers leaving formal employment moved into informal jobs, became unemployed or exited the labour force.
The near one-for-one relationship between the decline in employment and the increase in persons outside the labour force suggests that many workers exited the labour market rather than joined the ranks of the unemployed.
Youths accounted for more than two-thirds of the increase in persons outside the labour force, with 14,800 additional young people no longer working or actively seeking employment compared with a year earlier, according to STATIN.
carolyn.guniss@rjrgleaner.com
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