“After three years of downturn economic activity turned positive”

The local economy is improving says the latest Economics and Statistics Office report and if you haven’t noticed it, it is not surprising. The bad news – unemployment is going upwards. 1,700 Caymanians have registered as unemployed. This figure takes no account of Caymanians who do not so register, therefor this staggering figure must be even higher!

What is strange is the labour force actually grew, not much but it is going in the right direction, by 0.8% in 2011 totalling 37,620 in the local workforce. Caymanians benefitted the most from this but out of work Caymanians have also risen.

Again not surprising, employment in the field of construction fell by 6.3%.

One pleasing area for NLA, Ezzard Miller, is work permits were also down, by 2.9%. There were 20,452 in 2011 compared to 20,309 in 2010.

Sadly, the figure of unemployment is high in the area of young people leaving school. Unemployment levels are around 35%.

We show the summary of the Economic Report and inflation figures that showed a slightly higher figure in the Caribbean of 7.2% in 2011 from 7.1% in 2010. This compares to 3.1% in the USA. Higher energy prices in the Caribbean is given as the major cause.