Carol Coy, the Director General of the Statistical Institute of Jamaica announced in January that the country has broken a new record by achieving its lowest unemployment rate ever.
As reported by Caribbean360 Coy said, “After record-low unemployment rates of 8.4 percent in July and 8.7 percent in October 2018, the unemployment in January 2019 declined to a new low of eight percent. This was a reduction of 1.6 percentage points relative to 9.6 percent in January 2018.” She said this while releasing the March 2019 Consumer Index reports and Labor Force Survey for January 2019.
She further said, “When disaggregated by sex, the male unemployment rate declined from 7.4 percent to 6.1 percent, while the female unemployment rate fell from 12.2 percent to 10.3 percent. Among the youth, the unemployment rate was 21.8 percent. For male youth, the unemployment rate was 17.9 percent and for female youth, it was 26.5 percent. These showed declines when compared to January 2018.”
The number of the employed labor force in January 2019 was higher than January 2018 by 2.4 percent and the number of females employed was twice the number of males. The total number of employed males increased by 9,500 while that of females increased by 19,100.
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