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Last Updated: Feb 13, 2017 - 1:45:37 AM |
 Coming up to the Progressive Liberal Party Convention, you are going to hear some strange things come out of PLP politician’s mouths. You will hear things you never heard before, never had imagined was happening and the most unbelievable claims from amazing people with a penchant for crafting stories into what we would term their interpretive dances.
None more strange and curious than the Prime Minister’s claims that his party created some 32, 000 (est) jobs between 2012 and 2016, a claim made at a National Prayer Breakfast, of all places; and on a property, The Melia Resort, that lost jobs due to the PLP’s ineptitude in handling The Baha Mar scandal and subsequent fiasco.
The claim of 32,000 (est) new jobs alone is amazing, if the numbers backed up what his claim was. Before we discuss the nature of the type of jobs created and when the Labour Force Survey done by the Department of Statistics was conducted, before we speak to the massive layoffs and business closers around the country, let us examine the veracity of the figure in totality.
32,000 (est) new jobs presents about 13% of the entire adult population from the age of 15 years of age and above, or 230,000 (est) able bodied adult Bahamians. This 230,000 (est) amount of the adult population is not the actual labour force size that the Department of Statistics used, which is smaller because we have to take into account the persons who are structurally unemployable, retired or actually unemployed.
So, the PLP would have us believe that they created nearly 15% of the total adult working population’s total in sustainable, long term jobs? Considering that the unemployment rate is still in the double digits at over 12%, a figure we also do not believe, 13% to 15% of the adult population’s increase in jobs is absolutely unbelievable. Even more unbelievable when the Department of Statistics asserts that between 2012 and 2016 the amount of employed persons jumped from 161,000 (est) to 192,000 (est).
More importantly, in order to create 32,000 jobs, Real GDP needed to grow by at least 2% every year since 2012 to 2016 to create even half of that amount. That has not happened, because the economy averaged negligible growth at around .003%.
Furthermore, we have gone through this already with this PLP administration and their job claims: We have already established that SOME of the jobs created were short term construction related jobs that were unsustainable at the time of the survey; and the public sector jobs created data has not been released for us to see how many persons were in fact employed in the public sector and were they permanent and pensionable persons.
Nice try, PLP. Nice try!
Youri Kemp
DNA Candidate for Garden Hills
DNA Spokesperson for the Economy and Finance
© Copyright 2017 by thebahamasweekly.com
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