Stakeholders warn economy under strain

An­drea Perez-Sobers

Se­nior Re­porter

an­[email protected]

Trade unions and econ­o­mists are sound­ing the alarm over Trinidad and To­ba­go’s em­ploy­ment out­look, af­ter of­fi­cial da­ta showed near­ly 6,000 jobs dis­ap­peared in the first three months of 2026, warn­ing that the im­pact stretch­es far be­yond the labour mar­ket and in­to house­holds, busi­ness­es and the wider econ­o­my.

The lat­est Labour Force Sur­vey pub­lished by the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) showed em­ploy­ment fell from 569,900 peo­ple in the fourth quar­ter of 2025 to 564,000 in the first quar­ter of 2026, a de­cline of 5,900 jobs or one per cent.
The fig­ures come months af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that more than 15,000 jobs had been cre­at­ed since her ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice 16 months ear­li­er.

The CSO re­port­ed: “In quar­ter one 2026, the es­ti­mat­ed av­er­age num­ber of per­sons with jobs for all sec­tors was 564,000. Com­pared to the fourth quar­ter of 2025, the over­all em­ploy­ment across all in­dus­tries de­creased by one per cent.”

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue yes­ter­day, Sea­men and Wa­ter­front Work­ers’ Trade Union pres­i­dent and NATUC gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette said the fig­ures should con­cern every cit­i­zen.

He ar­gued that un­em­ploy­ment ex­tends be­yond those cap­tured in of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics, say­ing many peo­ple in dis­ad­van­taged com­mu­ni­ties have stopped search­ing for work al­to­geth­er.

“While I hear what the CSO is say­ing, and I will have to take their fig­ures, from where we sit at the trade union move­ment, when we go in­to sev­er­al com­mu­ni­ties, we won­der whether those per­sons are in the sys­tem to be checked, be­cause there are peo­ple who don’t even ap­ply for work, who stay on the block every day and who are lim­ing be­cause there is noth­ing for them to do,” An­nisette said.

He warned that pro­longed un­em­ploy­ment is erod­ing the coun­try’s so­cial fab­ric and called for an ur­gent na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion in­volv­ing Gov­ern­ment, em­ploy­ers, trade unions and oth­er stake­hold­ers.

“We are say­ing from the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre per­spec­tive, all the so­cial part­ners, all the tri­par­tite part­ners, all the stake­hold­ers must sit down and let us have the kind of con­ver­sa­tion that will cre­ate and gen­er­ate the kinds of jobs, not on­ly for the present, but for the fu­ture and the world of work.”

An­nisette al­so ex­pressed con­cern about young peo­ple en­ter­ing an in­creas­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive glob­al labour mar­ket.

“If we don’t ad­dress them and come up with cre­ative and in­no­v­a­tive ways in terms of how we fit them in­to so­ci­ety in the con­text of sus­tain­able jobs and the kind of ed­u­ca­tion that is nec­es­sary for them to work in this ever-chang­ing glob­al world of work, we’re go­ing to find our­selves in some se­ri­ous, se­ri­ous prob­lems in T&T.”

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer agreed the em­ploy­ment loss­es should be viewed as an eco­nom­ic is­sue rather than sim­ply a labour mat­ter. She warned that few­er peo­ple work­ing means weak­er con­sumer spend­ing, de­clin­ing busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty and low­er gov­ern­ment rev­enue, while plac­ing greater pres­sure on so­cial wel­fare pro­grammes.

“These fig­ures de­mand more than just ac­knowl­edge­ment. They re­quire de­ci­sive ac­tion to stim­u­late job cre­ation, pro­tect ex­ist­ing em­ploy­ment, en­cour­age in­vest­ment and en­sure that work­ers are not just treat­ed as ex­pend­able in the pur­suit of short-term fi­nan­cial gains,” Ogeer said.

She added, “A strong econ­o­my is built on se­cure jobs, fair wages and pro­duc­tive work­ers. When thou­sands lose their liveli­hoods in just one quar­ter, it is not just work­ers who suf­fer. The en­tire econ­o­my pays the price.”

For­mer min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning blamed Gov­ern­ment’s eco­nom­ic poli­cies for the de­te­ri­o­rat­ing em­ploy­ment pic­ture.

“The Gov­ern­ment is fail­ing, and its poli­cies are fail­ing the peo­ple of this coun­try. The Min­is­ter of Fi­nance can’t claim vic­to­ry while tens of thou­sands of peo­ple are cur­rent­ly un­em­ployed, and that can­not be the goal of any gov­ern­ment,” Man­ning said.

He al­so called for em­ploy­ment-fo­cused fis­cal poli­cies and pro­grammes to as­sist peo­ple who are tem­porar­i­ly un­em­ployed.

Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs said the in­crease in un­em­ploy­ment from 25,700 peo­ple in the fi­nal quar­ter of 2025 to 31,900 in the first quar­ter of 2026 should con­cern the coun­try be­cause the im­pact ex­tends well be­yond those who lost their jobs.

“These are not sim­ply labour mar­ket sta­tis­tics. They are not just 6,000 in­di­vid­u­als. They rep­re­sent thou­sands of house­holds now fac­ing greater fi­nan­cial un­cer­tain­ty and in­creas­ing pres­sure on their liveli­hoods,” she said.

Attzs said every job loss af­fects spous­es, chil­dren, el­der­ly par­ents and oth­er de­pen­dents.

“The re­al im­pact of un­em­ploy­ment is felt around the kitchen ta­ble.”

She said the lat­est fig­ures should al­so be viewed along­side the es­ti­mat­ed 5,000 peo­ple who re­port­ed­ly lost em­ploy­ment fol­low­ing the dis­con­tin­u­a­tion of sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ment pro­grammes, adding many house­holds have faced in­creas­ing fi­nan­cial pres­sure dur­ing the first half of the year.

Attzs al­so point­ed to the clo­sure of Nu­trien’s op­er­a­tions, con­cerns sur­round­ing Methanex, an­nounce­ments in­volv­ing Nestlé and oth­er busi­ness clo­sures as ev­i­dence of wider eco­nom­ic chal­lenges. She said these de­vel­op­ments re­flect con­cerns re­peat­ed­ly raised by in­ter­na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions about slow growth and the need for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

While wel­com­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo’s in­di­ca­tion that his next Bud­get will fo­cus on liveli­hoods, Attzs said prac­ti­cal mea­sures are now need­ed to gen­er­ate sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment.

Econ­o­mist Dr Ronald Ramkissoon wel­comed the CSO pub­lish­ing more time­ly labour mar­ket da­ta, say­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers can­not make sound de­ci­sions us­ing out­dat­ed sta­tis­tics. He cau­tioned, how­ev­er, against draw­ing sweep­ing con­clu­sions from a sin­gle quar­ter’s re­sults.

“We need to get be­hind the da­ta. What we see need not be the trend for the year,” Ramkissoon said, not­ing that em­ploy­ment out­comes could im­prove or wors­en as ad­di­tion­al quar­ter­ly da­ta be­comes avail­able.

He al­so warned against as­sum­ing that growth in the en­er­gy sec­tor would au­to­mat­i­cal­ly cre­ate jobs.

“The en­er­gy sec­tor is not a high em­ploy­ment area. It is cap­i­tal in­ten­sive, which means it is more cap­i­tal and less em­ploy­ment,” he said.

Ramkissoon said fu­ture eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy should fo­cus on gen­er­at­ing em­ploy­ment across a broad range of in­dus­tries rather than re­ly­ing on the en­er­gy sec­tor alone.
Guardian Me­dia con­tact­ed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo and Labour Min­is­ter Leroy Bap­tiste for a re­sponse but up to press time, nei­ther had replied.