CSO records 8,000-job increase in fourth quarter of 2025

SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

The Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) record­ed an in­crease of 8,000 jobs in the fourth quar­ter (Oc­to­ber to De­cem­ber) of 2025.

It’s the CSO’s lat­est fig­ures on the coun­try’s labour force sur­vey post­ed on their web­site.

CSO is yet to re­lease sta­tis­tics on the labour force for the first quar­ter of 2026 (Jan­u­ary to March) on its por­tal.

How­ev­er, dur­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s one-year an­niver­sary in of­fice cel­e­bra­tions in April, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar boast­ed that over 15,000 jobs had been cre­at­ed since be­ing vot­ed in­to of­fice.

Speak­ing at the event in Cou­va, which al­so marked the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ 37th-an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion, she cit­ed em­ploy­ment growth across sev­er­al min­istries, in­clud­ing Ed­u­ca­tion (2,647 jobs) and Health (1,304 jobs)

An ex­am­i­na­tion of the CSO da­ta by Guardian Me­dia In­ves­ti­ga­tions Desk showed that “per­sons with jobs” in all sec­tors grew from 561,900 in quar­ter three (Ju­ly to Sep­tem­ber) 2025 to 569,900 in the fourth quar­ter of last year.

This rep­re­sent­ed an in­crease of 1.4 per cent or an ad­di­tion­al 8,000 peo­ple with jobs.

It al­so showed T&T’s “to­tal labour force” had moved from 590,600 in the third quar­ter to 595,700 in quar­ter four.

The da­ta stat­ed that the num­ber of peo­ple “not in the labour force” in the third quar­ter was 490,500.

In the fourth quar­ter, CSO record­ed that 485,300 peo­ple were not in the labour force.

The labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion rate, which was 54.6 per cent in the third quar­ter, grew to 55.1 per cent in the fourth quar­ter.

The em­ploy­ment-to-pop­u­la­tion ra­tio for the last quar­ter of 2025 stood at 52.7 per cent.

Sta­tis­tics al­so showed that the “to­tal un­em­ployed” fig­ure of 28,600 in quar­ter three de­creased to 25,700 in quar­ter four, which rep­re­sent­ed a 10.14 per cent drop.

Be­tween April and Sep­tem­ber of 2025, the CSO had re­port­ed 12,000 job loss­es in the coun­try.

This was due to the fir­ings of CEPEP, URP, Na­tion­al Reaf­foresta­tion and Wa­ter­shed Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Pro­gramme, Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty and Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) work­ers.

To ar­rive at the 12,000 fig­ure, the CSO cat­e­gorised three ar­eas as “to­tal un­em­ploy­ment, per­sons with­out jobs and seek­ing work and oth­er un­em­ployed,” be­tween the sec­ond and third quar­ters of 2025.

The sta­tis­tics showed that 6,000 peo­ple were un­em­ployed, 4,100 were iden­ti­fied as per­sons with­out jobs and seek­ing work, and 1,900 in­di­vid­u­als were put in the “oth­er un­em­ployed” cat­e­go­ry dur­ing that pe­ri­od.

An ex­am­i­na­tion of the lat­est da­ta showed that the num­ber of peo­ple with­out jobs and seek­ing work in the third quar­ter of 2025 was 22,100, com­pared to the 21,300 in quar­ter four, a dif­fer­ence of 800.

For “oth­er un­em­ployed,” the third quar­ter reg­is­tered 6,600 peo­ple. The fourth quar­ter had 4,500, which showed 2,100 few­er peo­ple were on the bread­line.

The “to­tal un­em­ployed” in the third quar­ter was record­ed at 28,600. How­ev­er, in the fourth quar­ter, the fig­ure de­clined to 25,700.

Fol­low­ing last Oc­to­ber’s launch of the new­ly cre­at­ed T&T Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve, Per­sad-Bisses­sar promised over 20,000 jobs across var­i­ous min­istries and State en­ter­pris­es in the Gov­ern­ment sec­tor.

At the end of this re­cruit­ment dri­ve, a to­tal of 110,000 peo­ple ap­plied on­line or in per­son.

Of the 30,000 peo­ple who ap­plied for jobs from the Gov­ern­ment through Em­ployTT, on­ly 1,801 were hired by the Min­istry of Works and In­fra­struc­ture up to Feb­ru­ary.