President of the Human Resources Association of Barbados, Nicholas Roberts is concerned about high youth unemployment and under-employment. FILE/Nation News

However, with the jobless rate among young people at 19.5 per cent at the end of June, it is higher than the Caribbean and global level, based on information from the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Calling youth unemployment here “concerning”, President of the Human Resources Association of Barbados Nicholas Roberts says the worry extends to the number of youth who are under-employed.

A Central Bank of Barbados staff analysis of titled, Labour Market Performance In The First Half Of 2024 and based on data from the Barbados Statistical Service, says that the overall unemployment rate dropped from 8.5 per cent in the second quarter of 2023 to 7.7 per cent in the second quarter of this year.

“Youth unemployment also saw an improvement, decreasing from 22.1 per cent over the first half of 2023 to 19.5 per cent over the corresponding period of 2024. This trend reflects enhanced opportunities for young job seekers, possibly due to expanding job opportunities in sectors like retail and hospitality that typically absorb younger workers,” the analysis published as part of the January to September economic review states.

While a decline, the youth unemployment rate in Barbados is higher than that for the region and world.

The ILO’s Global Employment Trends for Youth 2024 report states: “The 2023 youth unemployment rate, at 13 per cent, equivalent to 64.9 million people, represents a 15-year low and a fall from the pre-pandemic rate of 13.8 per cent in 2019. It is expected to fall further to 12.8 per cent this year and next year.

“At 11.8 per cent, the youth unemployment rate for the Americas has fully recovered from the peak seen during the COVID-19 crisis, representing a multi-decade low.”

The report added: “Latin America saw the largest decrease in youth unemployment from 2019 to 2023, down by 4.5 percentage points, to 13.4 per cent. Rates for the Caribbean and North America fell to 18.1 per cent and 8.2 per cent respectively. The youth unemployment rate in North America was the lowest of all the world’s regions.”

Roberts said there were a number of dimensions to the labour market for youth, but he was concerned that the unemployment rate for young people in Barbados was nearly 20 per cent.

“The issue is that many students are leaving school, whether it be secondary or tertiary, and they can’t find employment for various reasons, whether it be that they are not skilled enough, or they can’t find jobs in the profession that they studied,” he said.

“That is one of the reasons why we are seeing brain drain within the youth (population segment), because people can’t get opportunities here and if they have the opportunities overseas they will take them. I think also an aspect that we often overlook is under-employment.

“The youth may go to school to study something, or they may be strong in one area, but when they leave secondary school or these tertiary institutions, they can’t get jobs in those fields, so then they have to go into something else,” the HRMAB president noted.

He elaborated: “Someone, for instance, may go to The University of the West Indies and do a bachelor’s degree in medicine or whatever the case may be, but because there are only a handful of jobs in Barbados, then they go into a totally different field or something that’s not related to what they studied, just to make a living. Sometimes it is not even a job that needs the qualification, so yes, unemployment is very important, but I think we also need to look at under-employment.”

Roberts also pointed to challenges for “those young people who are still in their teenage years or early 20s that leave secondary school”.

“Some of them leave school with CXCs, and because they can’t get jobs, then they have to then once again take jobs that they don’t want or are not in their interest. And then, by extension, you also have those young people that are leaving secondary school that don’t even have any qualifications, and the ones that can’t read and write,” he observed.

“So, it is a very multifaceted problem, and it is going to take many different ways to look at it and deal with it in terms of both the unemployment aspect of it and the under-employment aspect of it.”

His suggestion was to “do an analysis of the current curriculum of our secondary schools and, by extension, our tertiary institutions”.

“Look and see what . . . are going to be jobs of the future. I keep saying that we can’t only be training for the current jobs that are currently being taught for in the workplace, and rehaul the educational system completely,” Roberts said.

“Also, if you look at the global marketplace, skills are very important. A lot of businesses are now moving away from the certifications or the qualifications, and they’re more so looking for skills.”

“I think Nestlé is one of those corporations that moved away from it about a year or two ago when they were saying that ‘we are not looking for you having to have a bachelor’s degree or a master’s or whatever the case may be, but we are looking at the skills that you have that you may be able to bring to our workforce,” he said.

The human resources professional said these were the kinds of things Government needed to look at in relation to the young workforce. He also saw an important role for the private sector.

“You need to look at not hiring someone because they don’t have a certain degree or they may not have worked in the role that you are hiring, but look and see if they have transferable skills,” Roberts recommended.

“Someone may for instance have worked in education before, and they are looking to make a transition into another role. What skills do they have from that previous position that they could bring to this job that you’re hiring for? So, we also need within the private sector, and human resources [profession] to look and see different ways of hiring people, recruiting people and bringing people into our workforces.”

ILO Director-General Gilbert F. Houngbo called the Global Employment Trends for Youth 2024 report is a reminder “that opportunities for young people are highly unequal; with many young women, young people with limited financial means or from any minority background still struggling”.

“Without equal opportunities to education and decent jobs, millions of young people are missing out on their chances for a better future,” he said.

“None of us can look forward to a stable future when millions of young people around the world do not have decent work and as a result, are feeling insecure and unable to build a better life for themselves and their families. Peaceful societies rely on three core ingredients: stability, inclusion, and social justice; and decent work for the youth is at the heart of all three,” Houngbo stated.

While the ILO said the Caribbean’s 18.1 per cent unemployment rate last year was a long term low for the
region, it expects this to grow to 18.2 per cent by 2025. The report said this would make the Caribbean “one of only a handful of subregions with an expected increase.