While political parties have written lofty promises into their manifestos on reducing unemployment, the reality and the causes of our high unemployment rates must to examined and the conclusions conveyed to the electorate. The reality though hard to accept, is that high unemployment will be with us for some time into the future. It is also important to look at the causes as they may give some understanding to the solutions. Saint Lucia experienced a spike in population growth in the 1980’s, in which it experienced the highest level of such growth ever. The Statistics coming from our Statistics Department shows that by 2008, around the same time that those born in that era were entering the workforce; the labor market was not able to absorb the growth of the labour force, with the resultant effect of the growth of unemployment. Parallel with this phenomenon was the slowing of the...
