CSO records nearly 6,000 job losses in first quarter of 2026

Shal­iza Has­sanali

In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­[email protected]

In the first quar­ter of 2026 (Jan­u­ary to March), close to 6,000 peo­ple lost their jobs.

It’s the lat­est da­ta on the coun­try’s labour force sur­vey avail­able on the Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice (CSO) web­site, which is re­spon­si­ble for col­lect­ing, analysing and dis­sem­i­nat­ing of­fi­cial sta­tis­tics.

The CSO falls un­der the purview of the Min­istry of Plan­ning, Eco­nom­ic Af­fairs and De­vel­op­ment.

An ex­am­i­na­tion of CSO’s sta­tis­tics showed that in the fourth quar­ter of 2025 (Oc­to­ber to De­cem­ber), 569,900 peo­ple were gain­ful­ly em­ployed.

How­ev­er, by the first quar­ter of 2026, the fig­ure had dropped to 564,000, show­ing a de­crease of 5,900 jobs.

“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,” CSO stat­ed on its web­site.

The de­cline fol­lows Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s boast in April of this year that over 15,000 jobs had been cre­at­ed since be­ing vot­ed in­to of­fice 16 months ago.

A re­view of the CSO’s da­ta showed that in the last quar­ter of 2025, the “to­tal un­em­ployed” fig­ure was 25,700, which grew to 31,900 in the first quar­ter of 2026.

With 6,200 more peo­ple be­com­ing job­less, the un­em­ploy­ment rate in­creased by 24.1 per cent.

The da­ta al­so showed that in the last quar­ter of 2025, the num­ber of “peo­ple with­out jobs and seek­ing work” was 21,300.

By the first quar­ter of 2026, CSO re­port­ed there were 27,100 un­em­ployed in­di­vid­u­als, which re­flect­ed an in­crease of 5,800 peo­ple or 27.2 per cent more peo­ple were hunt­ing for work on the mar­ket.

“A year-on-year com­par­i­son (2025 quar­ter one over 2026 quar­ter one) re­vealed that the av­er­age num­ber of per­sons with­out jobs and seek­ing work in­creased by five per cent,” CSO point­ed out.

The sta­tis­tics re­vealed that the num­ber of “oth­er un­em­ployed” in­di­vid­u­als stood at 4,500 at the end of 2025.

How­ev­er, this fig­ure re­mained un­changed in the first quar­ter of 2026.

In the fourth quar­ter of 2025, CSO re­port­ed the “un­em­ploy­ment rate” was 4.3 per cent, which climbed to 5.4 per cent in the first quar­ter of 2026- mark­ing an in­crease of 1.1 per cent.

At the end of 2025, the “to­tal labour force” reached 595,700.

As the coun­try en­tered the first quar­ter of 2026, the labour force grew by 200 to 595,900.

Many of these job loss­es oc­curred in Jan­u­ary fol­low­ing the clo­sure of sev­er­al bars, restau­rants, a ni­tro­gen plant, a dai­ly news­pa­per, a cin­e­ma, a melamine plant, an ice cream out­let, a house­hold goods store and an ag­gre­gate com­pa­ny.

Some of the ter­mi­na­tions oc­curred af­ter the Gov­ern­ment’s in­crease in du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts in last Oc­to­ber’s na­tion­al bud­get de­liv­ered by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo.

These in­creas­es went in­to im­me­di­ate ef­fect.

Tan­coo al­so raised the Amuse­ment Gam­ing Tax from $6,000 to $24,000 per ma­chine, from Jan­u­ary 1, 2026.

Giv­en the surge of du­ties on al­co­hol and to­bac­co prod­ucts and high­er tax­es on gam­ing ma­chines, the T&T Coali­tion of Bars and Restau­rants and the Bar­keep­ers Own­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T warned last Oc­to­ber that it would crip­ple the in­dus­try and lead to wide­spread clo­sures and job cuts.

A list cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia at the end of Jan­u­ary 2026 claimed that 30 es­tab­lish­ments had shut down due to ris­ing fees, tax­es, eco­nom­ic de­cline, a drop in sales and ris­ing costs.

Among those bars that have closed were Scotchie Bar and Lounge, Livie’s Bar and Raj Bar and Lounge.

Restau­rants such as Blue Star Din­er, Rib Shack, DND Restau­rant, D’Bo­cas and Pa­pa John’s Debe branch fold­ed up.

Movie Towne cin­e­ma in To­ba­go went out of busi­ness.

Nu­trien shut down its ni­tro­gen plant af­ter 45 years of op­er­a­tion, while Pro­man Melamine an­nounced a tem­po­rary two-year sus­pen­sion.

Af­ter 32 years of pub­lish­ing a dai­ly news­pa­per, News­day shut its doors.

Dairy Queen’s Tu­na­puna branch al­so called it quits.

The Home­store Ch­agua­nas branch and Readymix (West In­dies) Ltd al­so ceased op­er­a­tions.

Be­tween April and Sep­tem­ber 2025, CSO da­ta showed there were 12,000 job loss­es.

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

How­ev­er, from Oc­to­ber to De­cem­ber last year, the CSO re­port­ed an in­crease of 8,000 jobs.

Dur­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s first an­niver­sary in of­fice in April, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar stat­ed that de­spite the clo­sures of CEPEP and URP, more than 15,000 jobs were cre­at­ed across min­istries from April 2025 to April 2026. .

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

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.