WHILE GENERAL UNEMPLOYMENT continues to decline, youth unemployment continues to be of concern to the Government.
Minister of Labour Dr Esther Byer Suckoo said that situation had caused the Freundel Stuart administration to rethink how it approached the problem over the last five years.
“According to the most recent availablestatistics from the Barbados Statistical Service for the first quarter of 2016, the unemployment rate stood at 9.3 per cent, a decrease from 10.2 per cent in the last quarter of 2015,”she said while addressing the Barbados Workers’ Union (BWU) 75th Annual Delegates’ Conference at Solidarity House on Saturday yesterday.
“Youth unemployment has been roughly three times higher than the general figure. The issue of youth unemployment is therefore one that my ministry is addressing.”
Noting that there were over 73 million unemployed young people across the world, Byer Suckoo said that this problem had caused countries across the region to question how they handled youth unemployment.
She said these questions were being asked: how were young people being prepared for a future for jobs yet to be invented, and how to encourage employers to take a chance on young people.
In searching for those answers, she said, the ministry had seen the need for new skills through the emergence of sectors such as renewable energy and the expansion of traditional ones like information technology and auto-mechanics.
“This and other observations had led the Government to place skills development as a priority, and over the past five years it has executed a number of projects and initiatives under the Barbados Human Resource Development Strategy, Inter-American Development Bank-funded Skills For The Future Programme and Strengthening Human And Social Development Programme,” the minister said. (AD)
