Unemployment Rate Increases To 10.7%

Unemployment Rate Increases: The inflation rate for December 2020 was 1.3 percent compared to a 0.6 percent inflation rate for the month of November.

While for the calendar year 2020 the inflation rate was 6.4 percent as released by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN), on Wednesday (January 20, 2021).

The upward movement in the inflation rate for December 2020 was mainly due to an increase of 2.4 percent in the ‘food and non-alcoholic beverages’ division. ‘Housing, water, electricity, gas and other fuels’ rose by 1.5 percent and ‘transport’ increased by point-three percent.

Meanwhile, the labour force survey for October 2020 saw a 7.4 per cent reduction in employment relative to the corresponding period in 2019. That’s approximately 93-thousand fewer employed Jamaicans  for the period.

Unemployment during the pandemic jumped to 42.5 percent in October when compared to the same period in 2019.

The unemployment rate for October 2020 was 10.7 percent, 3.5 percentage points higher than the rate in October 2019.

Meanwhile, youth unemployment for the period rose by 28 percent nearly seven percentage points higher than the related period in 2019.

CVM Live‘s Robian Williams: