The Continous Labour Force Sample Survey is conducted on a quarterly basis by the Statistical Service Department, under the provisions of the Statistics Act.
The survey seeks to obtain current socio-economic data from persons in randomly selected households across Barbados.
This data is used to generate estimates of the adult population, 15 years and older, who may be in the labour force (employed and unemployed) or classified as inactive (not in the labour force).
The basic objectives of the survey are to measure the labour force and its characteristics on a quarterly basis, as well as to provide a framework on which topics, such as household income and expenditure, poverty and housing conditions, among others, may be measured on a periodic basis.
Excluded from the survey are visitors and persons who are resident in institutions (such as senior citizens homes, children homes, psychiatric and correctional establishments).
However, persons who are temporarily absent from the household (for example, due to short term hospitalisation, or work, such as fishermen at sea) are still treated as part of that household.
A comparison of the labour force figures for April to June 2015 with the corresponding period in 2014, revealed the unemployment rate for the second quarter of 2015 stood at 11.9 per cent.
This figure represented a decrease of 1.3 percentage points from the rate of 13.2 per cent recorded during the second quarter of 2014. The unemployment rate for males was 12.8 per cent.
This remained constant with the figure recorded during the same period in 2014.
For females, the unemployment rate decreased by 2.5 percentage points (from a figure of 13.6 per cent in the second quarter of 2014 to 11.1 per cent for the second quarter of 2015.
The actual number of unemployed persons totalled 17 100; 2 000 persons less than the figure of 19 100 recorded during the corresponding period in 2014.
The total number of employed persons was estimated at 126 200;
8 000 persons more than the figure of 125 400 persons recorded during the corresponding period in 2014.
On the other hand, the total number of inactive persons increased by 7 000 (from 78 300 during the same quarter in 2014, to the present total of 79 000 persons.
As a result of these changes, the total labour force is now estimated to be
143 300 persons; 1 200 less than the corresponding 2014 figure of 144 400 persons.
The labour force participation rate for April to June 2015 was estimated at 64.4 per cent; 0.5 percentage points less than the 64.9 per cent recorded for the same period in 2014. The unemployment rate for the second quarter of 2015 was 0.1 percentage points more than the figure of 11.8 per cent recorded for the first quarter of 2015.
The labour force participation rate was 0.8 percentage points less than the first quarter of 2015.
The figures produced are now based on the revised weights using the population estimates obtained from the 2020 Population Census.
The numbers have been revised from the year 2010.
• This information was taken from the Barbados Statistical Services’ most recently released Continuous Household Labour Force Survey.
