Opposition Spokesperson on Native Authorities, Group Improvement and Sport, Natalie Neita-Garvey has charged that Jamaica has grow to be a significant exporter of college graduates.
She made the cost in opposition to the background of what she described because the low-skilled jobs which she argued, have contributed to the nation’s document low unemployment fee. Neita-Garvey made the arguments throughout her contribution to the 2025/26 Sectoral Debate within the Home of Representatives on Tuesday (June 10).
She instructed the Home that the Jamaican economic system continues to “stagger between marginal or torpid development, with durations of contraction on the macro stage, and a extreme contraction within the spending energy on the private and family stage the place it issues most”.
“In the identical vein, the much-touted improve in employment has been in the primary restricted to low tech, low advantages, low wage jobs,” she remarked. She famous that that is confirmed by the 2018 report of the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN) which states that the most important improve within the employed workforce between 2017 and 2018 occurred within the elementary occupations which incorporates automobile washing and road merchandising.
“Within the meantime, Jamaica has grow to be a significant exporter of college graduates, of key professionals comparable to lecturers and nurses, who search employment {and professional} actualisation overseas,” Neita-Garvey remarked. She stated that along with the unemployed, who’re outlined as these looking for work, there are some 300,000 Jamaicans between the ages of 15 and 34 who’re neither working nor looking for work.
“These are described as unattached with a majority having attended highschool for 4 years or extra with out certification of a single topic,” Neita-Garvey stated.
Based on her, “Many will affirm to you in dialog that the rampant under-employment amongst those that have labored, acts as a social disincentive for them to hunt work. Many honestly converse of shut pals and kinfolk who had been employed and getting salaries which barely cowl their bills of transport and lunch to get to work”.
“In different phrases, working to afford work reasonably than working to finance their social mobility or private and household growth,” she acknowledged.
“It’s hardly stunning that this group is a breeding floor for crime and anti-social behaviour; the adage applies – the satan finds work for idle arms,” she added.
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