5400 households selected for Labour Force survey

Head of the survey department of the Guyana Bureau of Statistics (GBS), Ion Manifold, on Thursday announced that 5400 households have been selected for the labour force sample survey in 2017.

Manifold stated that the survey, which is being funded by the Inter-American Development Bank, is expected to run for four consecutive quarters and thereafter the Government is expected to provide funding so that it can become a continuous exercise.

Highlighting that it is an expensive project to undertake, Manifold stated that there are some prerequisites they would first have to follow. He explained that the Bureau intends to visit some 5400 households spread across Guyana.

“Currently we are doing the listing process from which we are selecting the households for the sample survey,” adding that they envisage it would be finished by January-mid-February 2017.

He noted that from the sample survey, the Bureau would have critical labour data available: “Everyone wants to know the true unemployment rate… what is the unemployment rate as it relates to men and women? This survey will tell us that,” he said.

He stated that the information can also help our young people in terms of showing them where the lucrative areas of employment are.

“Hopefully we can get this done continuously,” he said, adding that after the IDB funding is exhausted, it is hoped the Government would commit to seeing it through. Guyana has not conducted a labour survey in over two decades. Before a nationwide Survey is executed, Cabinet’s approval has to be granted and requisite funding approved and disbursed. Consequently, labour data over the years had to have been drawn from intercensal Household Budget Surveys or Censuses since the Census of 1991.

Every Census and National Survey has therefore carried an economic activity module which has allowed on-going estimates and generation of key indicators on the Labour Force at intermittent periods over the past 25 years.

The last survey was conducted in 1997 but the report was not published. According to Manifold, another survey was expected to be executed in 2008 but the Government at that time did not find it necessary.

“The biggest considerations for continuous survey programme are cost and Government’s agreement of funding,” said the Bureau’s Chief Statistician Lennox Benjamin.

Earlier this year, the Bureau released data from its Compendium Three, which detailed the findings of the 2012 Census, putting Guyana’s unemployment rate at 12.5 per cent. When further disaggregated by gender the unemployment rate for males was recorded as 10.6 per cent and females 16.7 per cent.

The focus of this Compendium was the Economic Activity profile of the Census. Economic Activity focuses on the Labour Force component of the population profile, that is, the size and composition of the Labour Force, the level of employment and unemployment, types of economic activities undertaken within the economy, and many other areas of interest.