GUYANA DOES NOT HAVE AN UNEMPLOYMENT PROBLEM

Sep 13, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Does Guyana have an unemployment problem? The answer is no.
If there is high unemployment, then how does one explain the fact that the cost of labour is so prohibitive? Even your ordinary handyman is now costly. Simply sweeping the yard now costs $1000 per hour. Labour is no longer cheap. It is expensive and scarce.
Ask employers whether they believe that workers are being overpaid and they will answer yes. They will point to the lack of productive labour. With an unemployment problem, labour should have been cheaper and more productive.
If there were armies of unemployed, this would have spurred competition for jobs, driving the wage rate down. This is not happening. This suggests strongly that we do not have an unemployment problem in Guyana. What we have are labour-related problems.
What are some of these problems? Firstly, too many persons want to do office jobs and to be paid well for these jobs. With technology and the growth of the service industry, there are now many of these jobs available, Unfortunately they are grabbed up by the super-performers in our school system that are scouting the job market. These days unless you have top grades it is hard to nail down jobs in the major corporations that traditionally employ entry- level clerks. This is the first problem.
However, it is not that this is leading to unemployment. Companies such as Qualfon are employing thousands of young qualified Guyanese. In fact some kids are eager to leave school just to join this company. The pay is decent and the work is interesting. So there are office jobs available but not sufficient for the many that are seeking to escape working in stores, petrol stations and factories or doing manual labour.
The second problem is matching jobs to those that need them. The Ministry of Labour has fortunately recognized this problem. Manzoor Nadir had initiated a programme that allows the unemployed to register with the Ministry which then matches them with available jobs. Each year thousands of persons find jobs this way.
But not everyone does. The minority of persons that do not find jobs can be very vocal. Their plight is often used to depict the country as being short of jobs. I have always said before that if you are good enough at what you do, you will find a job. If you are qualified enough you will also be called for job interviews. Those who are not being called need to identify why it is they are having this problem.
The third problem is also about matching the self-employed to jobs. A great many of us have had the experience of wanting someone to do a particular job but not knowing how to find that person. I will give an example. Once, I needed someone to repair my piano. This was not one of those electronic pianos. It was the traditional wooden, manual  piano. I could not find anyone to repair it. And even when it was working, I could not have found anyone to tune it.
Perhaps my circle was limited. But I did ask around. Nobody knew anyone for the job. Then one day I needed someone to do some upholstery work. I was told of someone who lived miles away from my home. Unknown to me was the fact that less than two blocks away there was someone who could do the job competently. When I did find him, he complained that he was not obtaining much work. Yet in my area there were many persons who needed to have their furniture upholstered.
What this shows is that the self-employed also need to be matched with jobs. The problem is that most often those with the jobs do not know where to look. And when they do find someone, that person believes that the skill he or she has is in demand and so they overprice their jobs.
If however, I could find ten persons nearby to do the job, not only would there be competition for the job but this competition would raise standards and decrease the cost of the job.
The Ministry of Labour should therefore consider developing an on-line data base list of all those self employed artisans, craftsmen and manual labourers. So that if someone needs for example to have the trees in their yard trimmed, they can look up the database and see how many persons nearby to where they live do this type of job.  If they have a microwave that needs repairing, they can tap into the database and get the names of all those who offer this service. Then they can shop around to see who is offering the best work for the lowest price.
Such a database benefits everyone. For the craftsmen and artisans, it allows them more business. For the consumer, it means having greater choices and with more choice comes competition, better quality and more affordable prices.

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