Information released this week by the Statistical Institute of Belize revealed that about 30,000 of the persons interviewed in the 2010 census were without a job at the time they were interviewed, yielding a national unemployment rate of 23.1% compared to 20.3% in the 2000 census.
Based on the data Amandala has had a chance to study, the joblessness is clearly a youth problem, because the highest unemployment rates were reported among people in their late teens and early 20s, much the same as was revealed by the last census.
Specifically, the 14 to 19 age group reports an unemployment rate of 50%; the 14 to 24 age group — nearly 30%.
Also of interest is that the highest unemployment rate is among those who did not get any education beyond primary school or who have not completed even this level of formal education.
When we probed Prime Minister Dean Barrow about this very high unemployment rate, he told Amandala Thursday that he has “grave reservations” about the figures.
A 23% unemployment rate signals that, of the 130,000 who want a job and are available to work, a figure 46% higher than the 2000 census report, nearly 1 in 4 don’t have one.
The unemployment rate is a key economic indicator that signals the health of the national economy. However, the Prime Minister told us he has reservations about the latest reported figure because census takers never visited his family and several of his neighbors reported that they were not visited during the census exercise. He says he also does not know how accurate the last census in 2000 was, and so declined to comment on the figures.
The question of under-sampling in the 2010 census, in light of the fact that the last population estimate was about 30,000 higher than the population figure in the 2010 census, was addressed by 7 News director Jules Vasquez at the launch of the census findings last Friday.
SIB’s Director-General, Glenn Avilez, told the media that some people were, indeed, not interviewed in the census, and the crime situation in Belize City was one factor that hampered the work of his team.
Minister of Sports, Public Service and Governance, John Saldivar, said, “Every attempt was made by the field staff to count each and every single person living within the borders of Belize.”