Information Americas, NEW YORK, NY, Tues. June 24, 2025: Earlier this yr, I met a younger graduate who had spent your complete summer season looking for a job that matched her training – with out success. Because the weeks handed and her choices narrowed, she utilized to a neighborhood meat store, hoping to seek out some type of employment. However even there, she was turned away – she was “overqualified” to pack hen legs.
Her story isn’t distinctive. Throughout a number of Caribbean international locations, younger persons are discovering that tutorial {qualifications}, whereas important, don’t at all times open the doorways they anticipated. Companies, in flip, report issue filling positions, not due to a scarcity of candidates, however as a result of many job seekers merely don’t have the technical expertise or expertise required. This disconnect – between the availability and demand of expertise – is among the most persistent development constraints within the area.
In Grenada and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, for instance, corporations constantly rank the scarcity of a talented workforce among the many prime two obstacles to doing enterprise. The affect of this scarcity is placing: in 2020, 50% of all job vacancies in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines requiring expert employees remained unfilled resulting from a scarcity of certified candidates. In neighboring Saint Lucia, 40% of employers reported that the talents and training of employees hindered the nation’s competitiveness. In the meantime, the issue extends past companies – 61% of youth report difficulties discovering jobs or incomes a dwelling, actually because their tutorial {qualifications} don’t align with the calls for of the labor market.
The ramifications are wide-ranging. Youth unemployment in Grenada and Saint Lucia exceeds 40%, among the many highest within the Jap Caribbean. For individuals who do discover work, many are employed in roles for which they’re underqualified—57% of employees in Saint Lucia lacked the required {qualifications} for his or her roles in 2019 – or that fail to totally make the most of their training and expertise. Whereas such employment might supply earnings, it could additionally result in mismatches between employees’ capabilities and job calls for, leaving many younger individuals annoyed and limiting the potential of companies to function at full productiveness.
These challenges replicate deeper structural points, together with insufficient high quality of fundamental training and inadequate collaboration between post-secondary establishments and the non-public sector. Submit-secondary establishments usually function in isolation from trade, leaving college students with tutorial credentials however with out the sensible or technical expertise employers want.
Compounding the difficulty, the Jap Caribbean spends around14% of their training price range on post-secondary training, in comparison with 25% in Latin America and 32% in OECD international locations. With outdated laboratories, restricted digital infrastructure, and low capability to assist inclusive training, many establishments are ill-equipped to arrange college students for the calls for of in the present day’s labor market. These challenges are additional amplified by the emigration of extremely expert employees, who usually depart the area looking for higher alternatives overseas. This lack of expertise reduces the supply of expert professionals at dwelling and weakens the return on public investments in training.
The abilities scarcity not solely impacts particular person job seekers; it undermines the broader economic system by stifling productiveness, decreasing enterprise competitiveness, and limiting alternatives for innovation.
Partly resulting from lacking expertise, Jap Caribbean corporations should not adequately investing in and interesting in progressive actions. Solely 2.7% of corporations in Grenada and three.2% of corporations in Saint Lucia have human assets devoted to analysis and improvement.
Analysis and improvement are important for fostering creativity, creating new applied sciences, and bettering enterprise processes. For the Caribbean, funding in analysis and improvement is especially essential to deal with challenges in key sectors reminiscent of tourism, agriculture, and renewable power, unlocking new alternatives for sustainable development.
Nevertheless, many corporations understand the price of innovation as too excessive relative to the market dimension. In small economies, companies usually consider that investing in innovation received’t yield adequate returns resulting from restricted native demand or the excessive prices of implementing new applied sciences. This notion discourages corporations from pursuing innovation, limiting their development and competitiveness.
There is no such thing as a single resolution to those challenges – however there are clear areas for motion. First, post-secondary training ought to obtain extra consideration to make sure establishments are outfitted to ship related, high-quality coaching. Modernizing curricula to incorporate each technical and transversal expertise—reminiscent of problem-solving, adaptability, and digital literacy—is important for getting ready youth for the calls for of in the present day’s economic system.
Equally essential is fostering nearer collaboration between academic establishments and the non-public sector. Whereas some establishments already keep partnerships—significantly in tourism—there’s a have to broaden these efforts throughout a wider vary of sectors. Deeper and extra diversified collaboration may also help make sure that coaching applications align with evolving trade wants, encourage workplace-based studying alternatives, and assist analysis and improvement initiatives that foster innovation and job creation.
Increasing regional frameworks, reminiscent of shared studying requirements and qualification recognition, would enable for higher mobility of expertise and guarantee constant ability improvement throughout the area. For small island states, such collaboration additionally provides a sensible benefit: the power to pool assets and profit from cost-sharing alternatives, making training and coaching techniques extra environment friendly and sustainable. Lastly, addressing obstacles to innovation by creating incentives for companies to put money into analysis and improvement and bettering digital infrastructure will assist unlock the area’s financial potential.
The World Financial institution is working with Caribbean international locations to assist these objectives. The OECS Abilities and Innovation Venture is one instance. With $36 million in financing, the venture focuses on enhancing youth expertise, fostering regional collaboration, and strengthening a tradition of innovation. By supporting 40,000 younger individuals with focused coaching, establishing frequent studying requirements, and inspiring partnerships between companies and post-secondary establishments, the initiative goals to construct an ecosystem the place innovation and expertise improvement drive development.
Past the Jap Caribbean, international locations like Guyana and Belize are additionally stepping up efforts to shut the talents hole. In Guyana, the World Financial institution is supporting the federal government’s funding in a broad set of expertise wanted to energy its quickly increasing economic system—with a powerful emphasis on technical and vocational training and coaching. In the meantime in Belize, the place ladies’s labor power participation stays considerably decrease than males’s, a forthcoming venture will deal with early childhood improvement and feminine empowerment—with a devoted element geared toward increasing ladies’s employment alternatives by means of expertise improvement and assist for companies within the care and training sectors.
The Caribbean holds immense potential. Tapping into that potential would require a coordinated effort, long-term funding, and a shared dedication to aligning expertise with alternative. Encouragingly, that work is already underway.
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