Swaratsingh: Job losses reflect seasonal trend

AKASH SAMA­ROO

Se­nior Re­porter

Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Kennedy Swarats­ingh says the near­ly 6,000 jobs lost dur­ing the first three months of 2026 should not be viewed in iso­la­tion, ar­gu­ing that the de­cline re­flects a re­cur­ring post-Christ­mas em­ploy­ment pat­tern and does not, by it­self, sig­nal a weak­en­ing labour mar­ket.

Swarats­ingh was re­spond­ing to a Guardian Me­dia re­port on the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice’s (CSO) lat­est Labour Force Sur­vey, which showed that the num­ber of em­ployed peo­ple fell by al­most 6,000 be­tween the fourth quar­ter of 2025 and the first quar­ter of 2026.

While not dis­put­ing the CSO fig­ures, the Min­is­ter of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment said the more ap­pro­pri­ate com­par­i­son was be­tween the first quar­ter of 2025 and the cor­re­spond­ing pe­ri­od in 2026.

Swarats­ingh said em­ploy­ment ac­tu­al­ly in­creased by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 5,100 peo­ple, mov­ing from 558,900 in the first quar­ter of 2025 to 564,000 in the first quar­ter of this year.

He cau­tioned that com­par­ing the fi­nal quar­ter of one year with the open­ing quar­ter of the next with­out ac­count­ing for sea­son­al em­ploy­ment could give an in­com­plete as­sess­ment of the labour mar­ket.

“Over the past decade, Labour Force Sur­vey da­ta have con­sis­tent­ly shown that un­em­ploy­ment rates record­ed in the fourth quar­ter are of­ten low­er than those ob­served in the first quar­ter of the fol­low­ing year,” Swarats­ingh said.

He point­ed to CSO fig­ures show­ing that the num­ber of peo­ple with jobs fell by 17,300 be­tween the fourth quar­ter of 2023 and the first quar­ter of 2024.

Sim­i­lar­ly, em­ploy­ment de­clined by 13,400 peo­ple be­tween the fourth quar­ter of 2024 and the first quar­ter of 2025.

Swarats­ingh said those de­clines re­flect in­creased tem­po­rary em­ploy­ment dur­ing the Christ­mas pe­ri­od, par­tic­u­lar­ly in whole­sale and re­tail trade, hos­pi­tal­i­ty, trans­porta­tion and re­lat­ed ser­vice in­dus­tries.

Busi­ness­es typ­i­cal­ly re­cruit ad­di­tion­al work­ers to meet in­creased con­sumer de­mand dur­ing Christ­mas, he said, with many of those tem­po­rary po­si­tions com­ing to an end ear­ly in the new year.

“For this rea­son, quar­ter-to-quar­ter com­par­isons should al­ways be in­ter­pret­ed with due con­sid­er­a­tion of sea­son­al em­ploy­ment pat­terns, longer-term trends and the full range of labour mar­ket in­di­ca­tors,” he said.

“Look­ing at a sin­gle sta­tis­tic in iso­la­tion does not pro­vide an ac­cu­rate as­sess­ment of the over­all state of the labour mar­ket.”

Swarats­ingh al­so high­light­ed oth­er fig­ures from the Labour Force Sur­vey which he said showed pos­i­tive de­vel­op­ments when the first quar­ters of 2025 and 2026 were com­pared.

Apart from the 5,100 year-on-year in­crease in em­ploy­ment, the na­tion­al labour force ex­pand­ed by ap­prox­i­mate­ly 8,200 peo­ple, in­di­cat­ing that more peo­ple had en­tered or re-en­tered the job mar­ket.

Em­ploy­ment in­creased in whole­sale and re­tail trade; fi­nanc­ing, in­sur­ance, re­al es­tate and busi­ness ser­vices; and com­mu­ni­ty, so­cial and per­son­al ser­vices.

There were al­so em­ploy­ment gains among pro­fes­sion­als, man­agers, tech­ni­cians and as­so­ciate pro­fes­sion­als.

Ac­cord­ing to Swarats­ingh, growth among non-gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees and own-ac­count work­ers al­so point­ed to con­tin­ued ac­tiv­i­ty in the pri­vate sec­tor and among self-em­ployed peo­ple.

The min­is­ter ac­knowl­edged that an ex­pand­ing labour force could re­sult in both the num­ber of em­ployed and un­em­ployed peo­ple in­creas­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.

“An ex­pand­ing labour force is of­ten a sign of eco­nom­ic con­fi­dence, as more peo­ple ac­tive­ly seek em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties,” Swarats­ingh said.

“When labour force par­tic­i­pa­tion in­creas­es, it is pos­si­ble for both em­ploy­ment and un­em­ploy­ment to rise si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly.”

He said this un­der­scored why un­em­ploy­ment, em­ploy­ment and labour-force par­tic­i­pa­tion fig­ures should be con­sid­ered col­lec­tive­ly when as­sess­ing the state of the econ­o­my.

Swarats­ingh al­so reaf­firmed the Gov­ern­ment’s com­mit­ment to pre­serv­ing the pro­fes­sion­al in­de­pen­dence and cred­i­bil­i­ty of the CSO.

He said the Gov­ern­ment would con­tin­ue mon­i­tor­ing labour mar­ket de­vel­op­ments and us­ing of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics to guide poli­cies aimed at in­creas­ing em­ploy­ment, de­vel­op­ing the work­force and pro­mot­ing sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth.