Status of Guyana’s labour force to be determined early 2017 – Chief Statistician

The status of Guyana’s labour force is to be determined in early 2017. This is to be followed by a poverty related living conditions survey in the same year, according to GINA.

This disclosure was made by Bureau of Statistics, Chief Statistician, Lennox Benjamin, during a press conference hosted by the Ministry of Finance recently.

According to Benjamin, there has not been a full blown labour force survey for several years, possibly decades.

Unemployment rates or profiles of the country’s economic activities are essentially measured by way of a labour force survey. In the absence of a full-fledged survey, the Bureau of Statistics has been relying on approximations, garnered from the National Population and Household surveys.

Benjamin explained the absence of such surveys as being the result of the previous government’s failure to grant permission to proceed, despite the Bureau having, “done substantial work back in 2008 with the US bureau for census.”